Seasonal Precipitation Forecast Based on Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract

Agriculture is vulnerable to the interannual climate variability and to its unpredictability, in such a way that most agricultural decisions taken within the time horizon of several months are made in a conservative manner, supposing a near-pessimist scenario. The improvement of climate prediction may help the strategic view, mitigating unwanted impacts and taking advantage of favorable conditions. This chapter presents the development of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model for seasonal precipitation forecast based on climate indices, focusing on the practical aspects of selecting the best predictors, defining ANN architecture, data handling and ANN training and validation. The study case is the Pardo/Mogi-Guaçu rivers watershed in Brazil, which is characterized by intense sugarcane plantation for both ethanol and sugar industries. The results demonstrate how the methodology for seasonal precipitation forecast based on ANN can be particularly helpful, with the use of available time series of climate indices.