Stochastic Tracking of Mesoscale Convective Systems: Evaluation in the West African Sahel

Alexandros Makris (1) , Clémentine Prieur (2, 3) , Théo Vischel (4) , Guillaume Quantin (4) , Thierry Lebel (4) , Rémy Roca (5)

1 ICS-FORTH - Institute of Computer Science [FORTH, Heraklion]
2 AIRSEA - Mathematics and computing applied to oceanic and atmospheric flows
3 GdR MASCOT-NUM - Méthodes d'Analyse Stochastique des Codes et Traitements Numériques
4 LTHE - Laboratoire d'étude des transferts en hydrologie et environnement
5 LEGOS - Laboratoire d'études en Géophysique et océanographie spatiales

In this work we apply a recently proposed Bayesian Multiple Target Tracking model to Mesoscale Convective Systems tracking. This stochastic model follows the Multiple Hypothesis Tracking paradigm and can handle a varying number of targets while detecting the target birth, death, split, and merge events. The model is tested experimentally with real MCS targets detected from Meteosat IR data over the Sahelian region. The performance of the stochastic tracking is evaluated by comparing it qualitatively and quantitatively with well established deterministic methods.

Domaines: Statistiques [math.ST]; Sciences de l'environnement

Alexandros Makris, Clémentine Prieur, Théo Vischel, Guillaume Quantin, Thierry Lebel, et al.. Stochastic Tracking of Mesoscale Convective Systems: Evaluation in the West African Sahel. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 2016, 30 (2), pp.681-691. ⟨10.1007/s00477-015-1102-9⟩. ⟨hal-01187153⟩