Bay of Bengal wave forecast based on genetic algorithm: A comparison of univariate and multivariate approaches

Prediction of significant wave height (SWH) field is carried out in the Bay of Bengal (BOB) using a combination of empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis and genetic algorithm (GA). EOF analysis is performed on 4 years (2005–2008) of numerical wave model generated SWH field, and analyzed fields of zonal (U) and meridional (V) winds. This is to decompose the space-time distributed data into spatial modes ranked by their temporal variances. Two different variants of GA are tested. In the first one, univariate GA is applied to the time series of the first principal component (PC) of SWH in the training dataset after a filtering with singular spectrum analysis (SSA) for effecting noise reduction. The generated equations are used to carry out forecast of SWH field with various lead times. In the second method, multivariate GA is applied to the SSA filtered time series of the first PC of SWH, and time- lagged first PCs of U and V and again forecast equations are generated. Once again the forecast of SWH is carried out with same lead times. The quality of forecast is evaluated in terms of root mean square error of forecast. The results are also compared with buoy data at a location. It is concluded that the method can serve as a cost-effective alternate prediction technique in the BOB.