Application of random forest time series, support vector regression and multivariate adaptive regression splines models in prediction of snowfall (a case study of Alvand in the middle Zagros, Iran)

Abstract

We have conducted a case study to investigate the performance of support vector machine, multivariate adaptive regression splines, and random forest time series methods in snowfall modeling. These models were applied to a data set of monthly snowfall collected during six cold months at Hamadan Airport sample station located in the Zagros Mountain Range in Iran. We considered monthly data of snowfall from 1981 to 2008 during the period from October/November to April/May as the training set and the data from 2009 to 2015 as the testing set. The root mean square errors (RMSE), mean absolute errors (MAE), determination coefficient (R 2), coefficient of efficiency (E%), and intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) statistics were used as evaluation criteria. Our results indicated that the random forest time series model outperformed the support vector machine and multivariate adaptive regression splines models in predicting monthly snowfall in terms of several criteria. The RMSE, MAE, R 2, E, and ICC for the testing set were 7.84, 5.52, 0.92, 0.89, and 0.93, respectively. The overall results indicated that the random forest time series model could be successfully used to estimate monthly snowfall values. Moreover, the support vector machine model showed substantial performance as well, suggesting it may also be applied to forecast snowfall in this area.