Enhancing Heavy Rainfall Predictions Over Vulnerable Regions in Assam Using a Spatial Attention-Based Deep Learning Network

Forecasting extreme rainfall events (EREs) locally is a major difficulty for meteorological organizations in India's diverse topography, including Assam, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh. Flash floods cause major socioeconomic damage in certain areas. These extremes are increasingly commonplace during the southwest monsoon season in the country and one of the most destructive EREs occurred in June 2022 and 2023 over Assam. This work explores deep learning (DL) models, specifically spatial attention-based U-Net, in conjunction with simulated daily collected rainfall outputs from different parametrization schemes rainfall output from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, considering the limitations of deterministic numerical weather models in accurately forecasting these events. The model trained over the districts of Assam for all days (days 1-4) except the districts where the EREs occurred. The suggested model exhibited a greater ability to predict rainfall at the district scale with a mean absolute error of less than 10 mm over four days in June 2022, outperforming both individual and ensemble outputs of WRF. Furthermore, the suggested model had a high prediction accuracy of 91.9% in categorical rainfall prediction, outperforming WRF models by 51.3%. Furthermore, by accurately forecasting EREs at the district level, including Barpeta, Kamrup, Kokrajhar, and Nalbari, the suggested model has shown improved spatial variation when compared to the WRF model. The suggested DL model is tested for real-time ERE events over Assam in June 2023. In the second part, the model has trained for ERE occurred in 2022 and tested for 2023 over Assam at the district level. The district-level performance of the DL and WRF models is compared, and the DL model performs better than the WRF model in capturing EREs, with a noteworthy accuracy of 54.4% compared to only 22.8% for the WRF model. Notably, the DL model accurately represents the amount and severity of rainfall in Assam's western and southern regions. In summary, the study's conclusions directly affect the development of effective strategies for increased preparedness, mitigation, and adaptation measures over complex hilly regions to lessen the loss of life and property, as well as the improvement of early warning systems and related follow-up action.