Multi-Horizon Typhoon Wind Field Prediction via a Lightweight CNN–LSTM Network: Error Growth and Cross-Year Robustness at 6–24 h Lead Times
Short-term typhoon wind-field prediction across multiple lead times is challenging because forecast error grows with lead time and inappropriate sample construction may leak future storm-position information. We adopt STL-Net, a lightweight spatiotemporal framework integrating convolutional encoding, long short-term memory (LSTM) temporal modeling, squeeze-and-excitation recalibration, and multi-branch fusion for 10 m wind-field prediction at 6, 12, and 24 h lead times. A fixed-t0 protocol anchors the target patch at the initialization-time storm position, avoiding future best-track leakage. Trained in 2020–2021, validated in 2022, and tested in 2023, STL-Net achieves a root mean square error (RMSE) of 3.11, 4.06, and 5.31 m·s−1 at 6, 12, and 24 h. Among deep-learning baselines, U-Net achieves the lowest errors at 6 and 12 h and convolutional neural network (CNN) the lowest 24 h RMSE and mean absolute error (MAE), while STL-Net remains competitive with 1.673 million parameters and low inference latency. Ten-seed ablation identifies multi-resolution fusion as the most consistently beneficial component. An out-of-year evaluation with 2020 as the test year reproduces the error-growth pattern, supporting cross-year robustness. Models are deterministic without uncertainty quantification; error growth is deterministic, not calibrated uncertainty. Diagnostic interpretation links the error structure to the multi-scale organization of typhoon winds, storm translation, and wind-field asymmetry. Results constitute an offline proof-of-concept, not an operational system.
Authors
- Yongzhu Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9496-4438)
- Jun Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7590-730X)
- Jie Cui (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0855-7346)
Institutions
- China Meteorological Administration (CN)
- Guangxi University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Atmosphere
- Published
- 2026-09-29
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos17100950
- Primary Topic
- Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00