2334 Vol. 41, No.

10 / May 15 2016 / Optics Letters Letter

Using an artificial neural network approach

to estimate surface-layer optical turbulence
at Mauna Loa, Hawaii
YAO WANG* AND SUKANTA BASU
Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695, USA
*Corresponding author: ywang41@ncsu.edu

Received 4 March 2016; revised 12 April 2016; accepted 20 April 2016; posted 22 April 2016 (Doc. ID 260544); published 11 May 2016

In this Letter, an artificial neural network (ANN) approach Here C 2T (K 2 m23 ) is the second-order structure function
is proposed for the estimation of optical turbulence (C 2n ) in parameter for temperature; z (m) is the height above the
the atmospheric surface layer. Five routinely available ground; (K) is mean potential temperature; g T is a similarity
meteorological variables are used as the inputs. Observed function; and Rig is the gradient Richardson number, a stability
C 2n data near the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii are parameter. Generally, over land, Rig is negative (positive) dur-
utilized for validation. The proposed approach has demon- ing daytime (nighttime):
strated its prowess by capturing the temporal evolution of

C 2n remarkably well. More interestingly, this ANN ap- g
proach is found to outperform a widely used similarity Rig
 2 z  2 : (2)
u  v
theory-based conventional formulation for all the prevalent z z
atmospheric conditions (including strongly stratified
conditions). 2016 Optical Society of America Here u (ms1 ) and v (m s1 ) denote the horizontal velocity
components; g (m s2 ) is the gravitational acceleration. For vis-
OCIS codes: (010.0010) Atmospheric and oceanic optics; (010.1330) ible and near-infrared light, C 2T can be easily converted to C 2n
Atmospheric turbulence. using the Gladstones expression
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OL.41.002334 C 2n
7.9 105 PT 2 2 C 2T ; (3)

where P (hPa) and T (K) are pressure and temperature,

Accurate estimation of optical turbulence within the atmospheric
respectively.
surface layer (the layer adjacent to the land/water surface) is of
One of the limitations of the W71 approach and other closely
great significance for both civil and military applications [1,2].
related approaches is that they are only applicable for unstable and
The intensity of optical turbulence is usually characterized by
weakly/moderately stable conditions. In other words, it predicts
the structure parameter of the refractive index, C 2n (m23 ). C 2n
zero optical turbulence when Rig is greater than 0.2 (i.e., a very
values can be reliably measured by various types of research-grade
stable condition). This predictive behavior is not at all in
instruments (e.g., scintillometer and sonic anemometer); however,
agreement with numerous field measurements. For example, later
due to logistical and financial issues, these types of instruments,
in this Letter, we will document that near the Mauna Loa
and associated data, are not widely available. In contrast, mean
Observatory, very stable conditions occur more than 50% of
quantities of meteorological variables (e.g., temperature and wind
the nights, and measured optical turbulence values are far from
speed) are continuously measured by various organizations around
zero during those conditions. Clearly, new-generation predictive
the world with a very high spatiotemporal coverage. Thus, various
approaches are needed that could be operational under all types
empirical relationships have been proposed to estimate C 2n from
of atmospheric stability conditions. In this study, we propose such
these mean quantities. The MoninObukhov similarity theory
an approach based on a data-driven statistical technique, called the
(MOST)-based approaches [3] are the most commonly utilized
artificial neural network (ANN), to reliably estimate C 2n values
methods for C 2n estimation (refer to the review paper [4]). In
within the atmospheric surface layer. ANN techniques have been
the case of the gradient-based MOST approach [58], only mean
known for their capability of modeling nonlinear data systems
wind speed and temperature measurements at two levels are
with complex relationships (e.g., [9]) and it has been widely used
required for the estimation of C 2n . One such formulation was
in engineering, medical, and social science fields, as well as in
proposed by Wyngaard et al. [5] (W71):
atmospheric science (e.g., [10]). The advantages of using an
C 2T ANN approach is that it not only delivers an outstanding predic-
 2
g T Rig : (1)
z 43 tive performance, but it also does not require any a priori
z assumptions.

0146-9592/16/102334-04 Journal 2016 Optical Society of America

 Letter
Fig. 1. MLP ANN architecture.
In this Letter, a multilayer perceptron (MLP) ANN archi-
tecture [9] has been utilized. An MLP is usually comprised of
three types of nodes with interconnections. As shown in Fig. 1,
the lines represent weights and nonlinear transfer functions
that are optimized during the network learning process. The
complex combinations of these weights and nonlinear transfer
functions make the approximation of very nonlinear system
feasible. Modeling the relationship between C 2n and other
meteorological variables can be construed as a problem of non-
linear regression. Therefore, the proposed ANN architecture
has only one output node. The input layer contains the nodes
from various mean meteorological quantities (temperature, rel-
ative humidity, pressure, potential temperature gradient, and
wind shear). Following the literature (e.g., [11]), in this multi-
input, single-output architecture, only one hidden layer is
utilized. This hidden layer contains five hidden nodes, which
are found to be the most optimized for the C 2n estimation
problem. The widely popular LevenbergMarquardt back pro-
pagation algorithm is used as the training function. A commer-
cial ANN toolbox from MathWorks is utilized to perform all
the computations.
For various environmental (including meteorological) appli-
cations, which usually involve noisy measurements, the
available data set should always be divided strategically for
ANN-based regression model development. Conventionally,
these data divisions are termed as: training, validation, and test-
ing data. The training part is for the network to learn the fea-
tures of the data using a specific network architecture with a
fixed number of hidden nodes. The validation part is for pre-
venting the network from overfitting the data, which will inad-
vertently reduce its generality in prediction. In other words, this
portion of the data will make certain that the network fits only
the salient features of the signal and not the omnipresent (mea-
surement and/or random) noise. Once the network is
adequately configured (based on training and validation), the
testing portion of the data will provide independent assessment
of the performance of the network. Seven weeks of C 2n data
(June 8 to July 29, 2006) collected during the MLOCN2
campaign [12] at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii are se-
lected for this study. This data set includes 5-min averaged time
series of wind speed, temperature, and C 2n measured by sonic
anemometers on a meteorological tower at three levels (6 m,
15 m, and 25 m) above the ground, as well as temperature
and pressure at 2 m. The framework for calculating C 2n from
sonic anemometers can be found in [13].
In this study, 23 days of data from (June 8 to 30, 2006) are
utilized to provide the training and validation (henceforth these
Vol. 41, No. 10 / May 15 2016 / Optics Letters 2335
two parts together are referred to as the historical data), while
four weeks data (July 1 to 29, 2006) are used as the testing
portion. Five variables: 2 m temperature, 2 m relative humidity,
2 m pressure, potential temperature gradient at 15 m, and wind
shear at 15 m are used as the inputs of the ANN architecture.
The gradients of potential temperature and wind speed at 15 m
are calculated using a second-order finite difference approach.
The wind shear is the magnitude of vertical gradients of the
zonal and meridional velocity components. The potential tem-
perature is related to temperature by
T P 0 P0.286 with
P 0
1000 hPa. The hypsometric equation is used to calculate
P at 6 m, 15 m, and 25 m based on the measured 2 m pressure.
The optimization of the network weights and the sub-
sequent prediction of C 2n strongly depend on the partitioning
of the historical data into training and validation sets. To cir-
cumvent this issue, we make use of a Monte Carlo-type ap-
proach. Basically, 50% of the historical data are randomly
selected as the training part, and the remaining data are set
to be the validation part in each realization. Once the network
is optimized, a unique C 2n time series is predicted. We repeat
the partitioning process 100 times, and based on these realiza-
tions, we obtain an ensemble of C 2n time series.
Figure 2 shows the comparison of estimated and measured
C 2n (15 m level) at the Mauna Loa Observatory. Overall, the
ANN approach very nicely captures the timing and the mag-
nitude of C 2n evolution throughout the entire month of July.
Larger uncertainty is found during several of the nights
(e.g., July 1924) with calm wind conditions (u < 2 m s1 ).
Interestingly, the 1090 percentile range (the light green
shaded areas) of the ANN prediction also gets enhanced during
those time periods. In other words, the proposed ANN ap-
proach has the potential to quantify the uncertainty of C 2n pre-
diction. We would like to note that the traditional similarity
theory-based approaches do not offer such skill.
Based on Fig. 2, it is clear that the ANN approach outper-
forms the W71 approach in capturing the temporal evolution
of C 2n . As alluded to earlier, the W71 approach fails under the
very stable regime. In contrast, the ANN approach works quite
reliably. Even under weakly/moderately stable conditions, the
performance of the ANN approach is found to be superior to
the W71 approach. For example, during week two (nights of
July 1214) and week four (nights of July 2426), the W71
formulation overestimates the C 2n values significantly for
unknown reasons. Interestingly, the ANN approach does not
portray any such overestimation issue.
During the morning/evening transition time (short periods
around the sunrise and sunset) the surface layer is approxi-
mately neutrally stratified (i.e., no buoyancy effects). During
these times, the W71 formulation often fails to capture the
magnitude and timing of the expected drop in C 2n values.
The ANN approach improves on both these aspects. However,
there is room for further improvement.
In addition to the temporal evolution of C 2n , the ability of
the ANN approach in capturing the probability distribution of
the measured C 2n is also evaluated. Figure 3 shows the quantile
quantile plots of the measured and estimated C 2n during July 1
to 29, 2006. The agreement between the observed and the
ANN-estimated C 2n are quite satisfying, especially when
compared with the corresponding results based on the W71
formulation. We would like to note that the ANN approach
does tend to overestimate the low C 2n values (specifically
 2336 Vol. 41, No. 10 / May 15 2016 / Optics Letters Letter

Fig. 2. Time series of C 2n (15 m) at the Mauna Loa Observatory during July 1 to 29, 2006 (panels ad depict weeks 14, respectively). The red
dots denote the measured C 2n values. The blue crosses are C 2n estimated using the W71 formulation [5]. The black dots are the 50th percentile (p50)
of estimated C 2n . The dark and light green shaded areas represent 2575 and 1090 percentile ranges, respectively. Gray shaded areas indicate the
time periods when Rig is greater than 0.2 (i.e., very stable conditions).

C 2n < 1015 m23 ). This is primarily due to the overestimation Figure 4 shows the scatter plots of measured and estimated
of C 2n values during the morning and evening transition time, C 2n values. Clearly, the estimation from the ANN approach is
as shown in Fig. 2. closer to the 11 (diagonal) line and also less scattered (higher
 Letter
Fig. 3. Quantilequantile plots between the measured and estimated (p50) C 2n during July 1 to 29, 2006. Based on the 100 realizations of the
ANN-based C 2n time series, the median values (p50) are calculated and depicted with black circles. The blue circles denote the C 2n estimated using the
W71 formulation [5]. The sign of the potential temperature gradient is utilized as the criterion to split the data into daytime and nighttime. The left,
middle, and the right panels represent daytime (Rig < 0), weakly/moderately stable (0 Rig 0.2) nighttime, and very stable (Rig > 0.2)
nighttime conditions, respectively.
Fig. 4. Scatter plots of measured and estimated (p50) C 2n during
July 1 to 29, 2006. The daytime [panels (a) and (b)], weakly/
moderately stable nighttime [panels (c) and (d)], and very stable night-
time [panel (e)] results are shown separately. Panels (a), (c), and (e) cor-
respond to the ANN-based predictions, whereas panels (b) and
(d) depict the results from the W71 formulations. The correlation co-
efficients (calculated based on log10 C 2n ) are also shown in each panel.
r 2 ) during the nighttime in comparison to the W71 approach.
The W71 approach significantly underestimates the C 2n values
during the daytime. In this case, the ANN approach shows
better agreement. Also, for the very stable case, the performance
Vol. 41, No. 10 / May 15 2016 / Optics Letters 2337
of the ANN approach is reasonable. Of course, the W71 for-
mulation is not applicable for this stability regime.
In conclusion, the proposed ANN approach has demon-
strated its potential to reliably estimate C 2n values in the surface
layer under different stability conditions. However, further
research and validation studies are needed to establish the
generality of this conclusion firmly.
Funding. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
(FA9550-12-1-0449).
Acknowledgment. We are grateful to the National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) for making the
MLO_CN2 data set publicly available for research. In addition,
the authors would like to thank Ping He and Adam DeMarco
for valuable comments and suggestions.
REFERENCES
1. L. C. Andrews and R. L. Phillips, Laser Beam Propagation through
Random Media, 2nd ed. (SPIE, 2005).
2. A. Tunick, Meteorol. Atmos. Phys. 90, 159 (2005).
3. A. S. Monin and A. M. Obukhov, Tr. Akad. Nauk SSSR Geophiz. Inst.
24, 163 (1954).
4. R. R. Beland, Infrared and Electro-Optical Systems Handbook, F. G.
Smith, ed. (Environmental Research Institute of Michigan/SPIE,
1993), Vol. 2, p. 157.
5. J. C. Wyngaard, Y. Izumi, A. Stuart, and J. R. Collins, J. Opt. Soc. Am.
61, 1646 (1971).
6. K. Davidson, G. Schacher, C. Fairall, and A. Goroch, Appl. Opt. 20,
2919 (1981).
7. E. L. Andreas, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 5, 481 (1988).
8. A. Tunick, Environ. Modell. Software 18, 165 (2003).
9. S. Haykin, Neural Networks: a Comprehensive Foundation
(Macmillan, 1994).
10. M. W. Gardner and S. R. Dorling, Atmos. Environ. 32, 2627 (1998).
11. K. Hornik, M. Stinchcombe, and H. White, Neural Netw. 2, 359 (1989).
12. Mauna Loa seeing study, http://www.eol.ucar.edu/isf/projects/mlo/
report.shtml.
13. S. Oncley and T. Horst, Calculation of Cn2 for visible light and sound
from CSAT3 sonic anemometer measurements, 2004, https://www.
eol.ucar.edu/system/files/files/field_project/DASH04/background.pdf.