Precipitation Nowcasting with Satellite Imagery

Abstract

Precipitation nowcasting is a short-range forecast of rain/snow (up to 2\nhours), often displayed on top of the geographical map by the weather service.\nModern precipitation nowcasting algorithms rely on the extrapolation of\nobservations by ground-based radars via optical flow techniques or neural\nnetwork models. Dependent on these radars, typical nowcasting is limited to the\nregions around their locations. We have developed a method for precipitation\nnowcasting based on geostationary satellite imagery and incorporated the\nresulting data into the Yandex.Weather precipitation map (including an alerting\nservice with push notifications for products in the Yandex ecosystem), thus\nexpanding its coverage and paving the way to a truly global nowcasting service.\n