Simulating Tropical Cyclone Passive Microwave Rainfall Imagery Using Infrared Imagery via Generative Adversarial Networks

Tropical cyclones (TCs) generally carry large amounts of water vapor and can cause large-scale extreme rainfall. Passive microwave (PMW) rainfall (PMR) estimation of TC with high spatial and temporal resolution is crucial for disaster warning of TC, but remains a challenging problem due to low temporal resolution of microwave sensors. This study attempts to solve this problem by directly predicting PMW rainfall images (PMRIs) from satellite infrared (IR) images of TC. We develop a generative adversarial network (GAN) to simulate PMRI using IR images and establish the mapping relationship between TC cloud-top brightness temperature and PMR, and the algorithm is named tropical cyclone rainfall (TCR)-GAN. Meanwhile, a new dataset that is available as a benchmark, Dataset of TC IR-to-Rainfall Prediction (TCIRRP), was established, which is expected to advance the development of artificial intelligence in this direction. The experimental results show that the algorithm can effectively extract key features from IR. The end-to-end deep learning approach shows potential as a technique that can be applied globally and provides a new perspective TC precipitation prediction via satellite, which is expected to provide important insights for real-time visualization of TC rainfall globally in operations.