论文标题
空间天气建模的不确定性定量技术:热层密度应用
Uncertainty Quantification Techniques for Space Weather Modeling: Thermospheric Density Application
论文作者
论文摘要
近年来,机器学习(ML)经常被应用于太空天气(SW)问题。 SW起源于太阳扰动,由它们在太阳和地球之间的系统中产生的复杂变化组成。这些系统紧密耦合,不太了解。这创造了对熟练模型的需求,并了解其预测的信心。这种动态系统的一个例子是热圈,这是地球上层大气的中性区域。我们无法预测它在卫星阻力和避免碰撞操作的背景下对低地球轨道的物体产生了严重的影响。即使有(假设)的完美驱动因素预测,我们对系统的不完整知识也会导致中性质量密度预测不准确。正在努力提高模型准确性,但密度模型很少提供不确定性的估计。在这项工作中,我们提出了两种技术来开发非线性ML模型以预测热圈密度,同时提供了校准的不确定性估计值:Monte Carlo(MC)辍学和直接预测概率分布,均使用预测密度(NLPD)损失函数的负对数。我们展示了在本地和全球数据集中训练的模型的性能。这表明NLPD为这两种技术提供了相似的结果,但是直接概率方法的计算成本要低得多。对于在集合HASDM密度数据库中进行回归的全局模型,我们在具有良好校准的不确定性估计的独立测试数据上达到了11%的错误。使用原位冠军密度数据集,两种技术都以13%的订单均提供了测试错误。在所有预测间隔中,Champ Model(在独立数据上)均在完美校准的2%之内。该模型也可以用于在给定时期内获得不确定性的全局预测。
Machine learning (ML) has often been applied to space weather (SW) problems in recent years. SW originates from solar perturbations and is comprised of the resulting complex variations they cause within the systems between the Sun and Earth. These systems are tightly coupled and not well understood. This creates a need for skillful models with knowledge about the confidence of their predictions. One example of such a dynamical system is the thermosphere, the neutral region of Earth's upper atmosphere. Our inability to forecast it has severe repercussions in the context of satellite drag and collision avoidance operations for objects in low Earth orbit. Even with (assumed) perfect driver forecasts, our incomplete knowledge of the system results in often inaccurate neutral mass density predictions. Continuing efforts are being made to improve model accuracy, but density models rarely provide estimates of uncertainty. In this work, we propose two techniques to develop nonlinear ML models to predict thermospheric density while providing calibrated uncertainty estimates: Monte Carlo (MC) dropout and direct prediction of the probability distribution, both using the negative logarithm of predictive density (NLPD) loss function. We show the performance for models trained on local and global datasets. This shows that NLPD provides similar results for both techniques but the direct probability method has a much lower computational cost. For the global model regressed on the SET HASDM density database, we achieve errors of 11% on independent test data with well-calibrated uncertainty estimates. Using an in-situ CHAMP density dataset, both techniques provide test error on the order of 13%. The CHAMP models (on independent data) are within 2% of perfect calibration for all prediction intervals tested. This model can also be used to obtain global predictions with uncertainties at a given epoch.