Hybrid model of the near-ground temperature profile

Abstract

The topic of the paper is modelling and prediction of atmospheric variables that are further used for prediction of the consequences of radioactive-material release to the atmosphere. Physics-based models of atmospheric dynamics provide an approximate description of the true nature of a dynamic system. However, the accuracy of the model’s short-term predictions and long-term forecasts, especially over complex terrain, decreases when the information at a micro-location is sought. Integration of a physics-based model with a statistical model for enhancing the prediction power is proposed in the paper. Gaussian Processes models can be used to identify the mapping between the system input and output measured values. With the given mapping function, we can provide one-step ahead prediction of the system output values together with its uncertainty, which can be used advantageously. In this paper, we combine a physics-based model with a Gaussian-process model to identify air temperature from measurements at different atmospheric surface layers as a dynamic system and to make short-term predictions as well as long-term forecasts.