Pre-tactical convection prediction for air traffic flow management using LSTM neural network

This paper aims to explore machine learning techniques for post-processing high-resolution Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) products for the early detection of convection. Data from the Arome Ensemble Prediction System and satellite observations from the Rapidly Developing Thunderstorm (RDT) product by Météo-France are used to train a recurrent neural network model to predict areas of total convection and moderate convection. The learning task is formulated as a binary classification problem using a long short-term memory (LSTM) network architecture. Results from the LSTM model are compared with an object-based probabilistic approach to forecast convection using metrics such as a receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve, the Brier score and reliability. Results indicate that the LSTM model performs similarly to the object-based probabilistic benchmark when classifying moderate convection areas and shows improved skill when classifying areas of total convective. Finally, the LSTM model results are presented within an air traffic management context to showcase the potential use of machine learning models within an operational application.