Spatio-Temporal Modeling of Temperature Fields in the Pacific Northwest

• Activity Number: 247
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 10, 2015 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Camila Casquilho-Resende* and Nhu Le and James Zidek
• Companies: The University of British Columbia and BC Cancer Agency and The University of British Columbia
• Keywords: Spatio-temporal modelling ; Hierarchical modelling ; Spatial prediction ; Complex terrain ; Nonstationarity ; Gaussian process

Abstract

The modelling of temperature fields, which are crucial to understand a region's climate, can be challenging due to the topography of the study region. In the Pacific Northwest, extensive forests, mountains and proximity to the Pacific Ocean may create sudden changes in climate, contributing to the complexity of the modelling of temperature fields in this area. In this work, we develop a hierarchical spatio-temporal model for characterizing daily temperature fields in the Pacific Northwest and introduce a Bayesian spatial prediction method that allows site-specific features.