Future Predictions of Rainfall and Temperature Using GCM and ANN for Arid Regions: A Case Study for the Qassim Region, Saudi Arabia

Khalid Alotaibi,Husnain Haider,Abdul Ghumman,Md Shafiquzzaman,Yousry Ghazaw

doi:10.3390/w10091260

Abstract

Future predictions of rainfall patterns in water-scarce regions are highly important for effective water resource management. Global circulation models (GCMs) are commonly used to make such predictions, but these models are highly complex and expensive. Furthermore, their results are associated with uncertainties and variations for different GCMs for various greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Data-driven models including artificial neural networks (ANNs) and adaptive neuro fuzzy inference systems (ANFISs) can be used to predict long-term future changes in rainfall and temperature, which is a challenging task and has limitations including the impact of greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Therefore, in this research, results from various GCMs and data-driven models were investigated to study the changes in temperature and rainfall of the Qassim region in Saudi Arabia. Thirty years of monthly climatic data were used for trend analysis using Mann–Kendall test and simulating the changes in temperature and rainfall using three GCMs (namely, HADCM3, INCM3, and MPEH5) for the A1B, A2, and B1 emissions scenarios as well as two data-driven models (ANN: feed-forward-multilayer, perceptron and ANFIS) without the impact of any emissions scenario. The results of the GCM were downscaled for the Qassim region using the Long Ashton Research Station’s Weather Generator 5.5. The coefficient of determination (R2) and Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) were used to compare the performance of the models. Results showed that the ANNs could outperform the ANFIS for predicting long-term future temperature and rainfall with acceptable accuracy. All nine GCM predictions (three models with three emissions scenarios) differed significantly from one another. Overall, the future predictions showed that the temperatures of the Qassim region will increase with a specified pattern from 2011 to 2099, whereas the changes in rainfall will differ over various spans of the future.

Highlights

Global climatic change is affecting water resources and several other aspects of life in many developed and developing countries
The main objectives of this paper are: (i) to provide a wide range of future predictions of rainfall based on stationary conditions and various emission scenarios; (ii) to evaluate the performance of data driven models, i.e., adaptive neuro fuzzy inference systems (ANFISs) and artificial neural networks (ANNs) for rainfall prediction; (iii) to estimate climate change impacts on temperature, monthly rainfall, and annual rainfall in an arid region; and (iv) to assess the effectiveness of the data driven model by comparing its predicted long-term rainfall with the results of nine different
The data were divided into three parts: 60%, 20%, and 20%, respectively, for training, testing, and validation of ANN and ANFIS models

Summary

Introduction

Global climatic change is affecting water resources and several other aspects of life in many developed and developing countries. Research on climate change due to global warming has achieved high importance over the past few decades [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The magnitude of climatic changes including variations in temperature and rainfall differs in various parts of the world [4,5,8,9]. Some arid regions are expected to experience droughts while others may be affected by heavy rainfalls. The rates of warming and sea level rise are faster than the mean global rate in China [5].

Objectives

Methods

Results