Long-term forecasting of climatic parameters using parametric and non-parametric stochastic modelling

<jats:p>Climatic parameters fluctuate dynamically and their turbulences become more significant as the influence of the climate change increases. A robust model that is able to factor in the recent climate change for long-term climatic parameters forecasting is desired to strategically plan for future anthropogenic activities. In this study, two stochastic time series model, namely the seasonal auto-regressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) model and the artificial neural network (ANN) model are used to predict monthly mean temperature (<jats:italic>T<jats:sub>mean</jats:sub></jats:italic>), relative humidity (<jats:italic>RH</jats:italic>), wind speed (<jats:italic>u</jats:italic>) and pan evaporation (<jats:italic>E<jats:sub>pan</jats:sub></jats:italic>) up to 12 months ahead. This study is conducted using data collected from three meteorological stations in the northern region of the Peninsular Malaysia. The stochastic models forecasted the <jats:italic>T<jats:sub>mean</jats:sub></jats:italic> with the highest accuracy, followed by <jats:italic>RH</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>u</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>E<jats:sub>pan</jats:sub></jats:italic>. Besides, despite the increasing time step (from 1 to 12 months), the accuracy of the models remain consistent. However, both of the models are susceptible to the occurrence of extreme climates. In general, the SARIMA model performs better than the ANN model, probably attributed to its ability to consider the seasonality of the climatic data rather than depending solely on black-box computation.</jats:p>