ORCID Profile
0000-0002-7956-8453
Current Organisations
University of Western Australia
,
Edith Cowan University
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Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 28-06-2021
Abstract: Abstract. The errors and uncertainties associated with gap-filling algorithms of water, carbon, and energy fluxes data have always been one of the main challenges of the global network of microclimatological tower sites that use the eddy covariance (EC) technique. To address these concerns and find more efficient gap-filling algorithms, we reviewed eight algorithms to estimate missing values of environmental drivers and nine algorithms for the three major fluxes typically found in EC time series. We then examined the algorithms' performance for different gap-filling scenarios utilising the data from five EC towers during 2013. This research's objectives were (a) to evaluate the impact of the gap lengths on the performance of each algorithm and (b) to compare the performance of traditional and new gap-filling techniques for the EC data, for fluxes, and separately for their corresponding meteorological drivers. The algorithms' performance was evaluated by generating nine gap windows with different lengths, ranging from a day to 365 d. In each scenario, a gap period was chosen randomly, and the data were removed from the dataset accordingly. After running each scenario, a variety of statistical metrics were used to evaluate the algorithms' performance. The algorithms showed different levels of sensitivity to the gap lengths the Prophet Forecast Model (FBP) revealed the most sensitivity, whilst the performance of artificial neural networks (ANNs), for instance, did not vary as much by changing the gap length. The algorithms' performance generally decreased with increasing the gap length, yet the differences were not significant for windows smaller than 30 d. No significant differences between the algorithms were recognised for the meteorological and environmental drivers. However, the linear algorithms showed slight superiority over those of machine learning (ML), except the random forest (RF) algorithm estimating the ground heat flux (root mean square errors – RMSEs – of 28.91 and 33.92 for RF and classic linear regression – CLR, respectively). However, for the major fluxes, ML algorithms and the MDS showed superiority over the other algorithms. Even though ANNs, random forest (RF), and eXtreme Gradient Boost (XGB) showed comparable performance in gap-filling of the major fluxes, RF provided more consistent results with slightly less bias against the other ML algorithms. The results indicated no single algorithm that outperforms in all situations, but the RF is a potential alternative for the MDS and ANNs as regards flux gap-filling.
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 07-09-2020
DOI: 10.5194/GI-2020-21
Abstract: Abstract. The errors and uncertainties associated with gap-filling algorithms of water, carbon and energy fluxes data, have always been one of the prominent challenges of the global network of microclimatological tower sites that use eddy covariance (EC) technique. To address this concern, and find more efficient gap-filling algorithms, we reviewed eight algorithms to estimate missing values of environmental drivers, and separately three major fluxes in EC time series. We then examined the performance of mentioned algorithms for different gap-filling scenarios utilising data from five OzFlux Network towers during 2013. The objectives of this research were (a) to evaluate the impact of training and testing window lengths on the performance of each algorithm (b) to compare the performance of traditional and new gap-filling techniques for the EC data, for fluxes and their corresponding meteorological drivers. The performance of algorithms was evaluated by generating nine different training-testing window lengths, ranging from a day to 365 days. In each scenario, the gaps covered the data for the entirety of 2013 by consecutively repeating them, where, in each step, values were modelled by using earlier window data. After running each scenario, a variety of statistical metrics was used to evaluate the performance of the algorithms. The algorithms showed different levels of sensitivity to training-testing windows The Prophet Forecast Model (FBP) revealed the most sensitivity, whilst the performance of artificial neural networks (ANNs), for instance, did not vary considerably by changing the window length. The performance of the algorithms generally decreased with increasing training-testing window length, yet the differences were not considerable for the windows smaller than 60 days. Gap-filling of the environmental drivers showed there was not a significant difference amongst the algorithms, the linear algorithms showed slight superiority over those of machine learning (ML), except the random forest algorithm estimating the ground heat flux (RMSEs of 30.17 and 34.93 for RF and CLR respectively). For the major fluxes, though, ML algorithms showed superiority (9 % less RMSE on average), except the Support Vector Regression (SVR), which provided significant bias in its estimations. Even though ANNs, random forest (RF) and extreme gradient boost (XGB) showed close performance in gap-filling of the major fluxes, RF provided more consistent results with less bias, relatively. The results indicated that there is no single algorithm which outperforms in all situations and therefore, but RF is a potential alternative for the ANNs as regards flux gap-filling.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-2016
No related grants have been discovered for Atbin Mahabbati.