Application of a bayesian classifier of anomalous propagation to single-polarization radar reflectivity data

Abstract

Anaïve Bayes classifier (NBC) was developed to distinguish precipitation echoes from anomalous propagation (anaprop). The NBC is an application of Bayes's theorem, which makes its classification decision based on the class with the maximuma posteriori probability. Several feature fields were input to the Bayes classifier: texture of reflectivity (TDBZ), a measure of the reflectivity fluctuations (SPIN), and vertical profile of reflectivity (VPDBZ). Prior conditional probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the feature fields were constructed from training sets for severalmeteorological scenarios and for anaprop.ABox-Cox transformwas applied to transformthese PDFs to approximate Gaussian distributions, which enabled efficient numerical computation as they could be specified completely by their mean and standard deviation. Combinations of the feature fields were tested on the training datasets to evaluate the best combination for discriminating anaprop and precipitation, which was found to be TDBZ and VPDBZ. The NBC was applied to a case of convective rain embedded in anaprop and found to be effective at distinguishing the echoes. Furthermore, despite having been trained with data from a single radar, the NBC was successful at distinguishing precipitation and anaprop fromtwo nearby radars with differing wavelength and beamwidth characteristics. The NBC was extended to implement a strength of classification index that provides a metric to quantify the confidence with which data have been classified as precipitation and, consequently, a method to censor data for assimilation or quantitative precipitation estimation. © 2013 American Meteorological Society.