Application Potential of Four Nontraditional Similarity Metrics in Hydrometeorology

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-13-0140.1

Language of the publication
English
Date
2014-10-01
Type
Article
Author(s)
  • Mo, Ruping
  • Ye, Chengzhi
  • Whitfield, Paul H.
Publisher
American Meteorological Society

Abstract

This paper presents a review and assessment of four nontraditional similarity metrics that can be applied to hydrological and meteorological data. These metrics are 1) the uncentered correlation coefficient, 2) the Hodgkin–Richards index, 3) the Petke index, and 4) the Wang–Bovik index. The first metric has been widely used in hydrometeorology, and the other three have been proposed in other disciplines for similarity analysis. It is demonstrated that these similarity metrics, in their original formulations, either do not actually have the purported advantage over the traditional Pearson correlation coefficient or are not suitable for some hydrometeorological applications. They are reformulated in this study to address these deficiencies. The resulting modified metrics are unitless, bounded, and proportional to the Pearson correlation coefficient, and three of them have the confirmed advantage of explicitly penalizing for differences in the mean and/or in the variance. Two application examples are used to demonstrate the applicability of these similarity metrics in hydrometeorology. A metavalidation model and a graphical tool (Taylor diagram) are used to evaluate the performances of these similarity metrics. In a case study of analog analysis, the Wang–Bovik index stands out as the best metric for simulation of the human perception of similarity between two-dimensional patterns, whereas the modified Petke index and the traditional root-mean-square distance may perform slightly better than the others in the regions with a very large difference between the variances.

Description

Copyright [2014] American Meteorological Society (AMS). For permission to reuse any portion of this Work, please contact permissions@ametsoc.org. Any use of material in this Work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S. Code § 107) or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC § 108) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a website or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. All AMS journals and monograph publications are registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (https://www.copyright.com). Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy statement, available on the AMS website (https://www.ametsoc.org/PUBSCopyrightPolicy)

Subject

  • Nature and environment,
  • Science and technology,
  • Climate

Pagination

1862–1880

Peer review

Yes

Open access level

Green

Identifiers

ISSN
1525-755X
1525-7541

Article

Journal title
Journal of Hydrometeorology
Journal volume
15
Journal issue
5
Accepted date
2014-04-21
Submitted date
2013-08-15

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Collection(s)

Climate and weather

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