Bias correction of ERA5-Land temperature data using standalone and ensemble machine learning models: a case of northern Italy

Abstract

Using the global climate model outputs without any adjustment may bring errors in water resources and climate change investigations. This study tackles the critical issue of bias correction temperature in ERA5-Land reanalysis for 10 ground stations in northern Italy using nine machine learning (ML) techniques. Among standalone ML models, XGBoost regression emerged as the most effective standalone ML model, outperforming others across 6 out of 10 stations, while random forest regression, Gaussian process regression, and support vector regression obtained the second to fourth places. In contrast, AdaBoost regression (ABR) achieved the least favorable performance. Furthermore, nine ensemble ML models are proposed to correct bias of the reanalysis of temperature data. The results indicated that the K-nearest neighbors-based ensemble model excelled and secured the top rank in 7 out of 10 stations, while the multiple linear regression-based ensemble model achieved the highest precision in 4 out of 10 stations. Furthermore, other ML-based ensemble models displayed satisfactory results. On the other hand, the ABR-based ensemble model exhibited the lowest accuracy among ML-based ensemble models. The findings highlight the potential of ML-based ensemble models in effectively addressing bias correction in climate data. HIGHLIGHTS Proposing nine ensemble ML models for bias correction.; Introducing nine standalone ML models for bias correction.; Correcting temperature data of ERA5-Land for a case study in northern Italy.; Comparison of different ML-based models for bias correction.; Correcting data of climate data can enhance studying climate change impact assessment.;

Keywords

• bias correction
• ensemble model
• era5-land
• machine learning
• xgboost