Subseasonal Forecasts of Opportunity Identified by an Interpretable
Neural Network
Abstract
Midlatitude prediction on subseasonal timescales is difficult due to the
chaotic nature of the atmosphere and often requires the identification
of favorable atmospheric conditions that may lead to enhanced skill
(“forecasts of opportunity”). Here, we demonstrate that an artificial
neural network can identify such opportunities for
tropical-extratropical teleconnections to the North Atlantic circulation
at a lead of 22 days using the network’s confidence in a given
prediction. Furthermore, layer-wise relevance propagation, an ANN
interpretability technique, pinpoints the relevant tropical features the
ANN uses to make accurate predictions. We find that layer-wise relevance
propagation identifies tropical hot spots that correspond to known
favorable regions for midlatitude teleconnections and reveals a
potential new pattern for prediction over the North Atlantic on
subseasonal timescales.