# Using Unsupervised and Supervised Learning and Digital Twin for Deep Convective Ice Storm Classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.07173 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07173/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 1 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Digital Twin AI: Opportunities and Challenges from Large Language Models to World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01321/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Smart Ice Cloud Sensing (SMICES) is a small-sat concept in which a primary radar intelligently targets ice storms based on information collected by a lookahead radiometer. Critical to the intelligent targeting is accurate identification of storm/cloud types from eight bands of radiance collected by the radiometer. The cloud types of interest are: clear sky, thin cirrus, cirrus, rainy anvil, and convection core. We describe multi-step use of Machine Learning and Digital Twin of the Earth's atmosphere to derive such a classifier. First, a digital twin of Earth's atmosphere called a Weather Research Forecast (WRF) is used generate simulated lookahead radiometer data as well as deeper "science" hidden variables. The datasets simulate a tropical region over the Caribbean and a non-tropical region over the Atlantic coast of the United States. A K-means clustering over the scientific hidden variables was utilized by human experts to generate an automatic labelling of the data - mapping each physical data point to cloud types by scientists informed by mean/centroids of hidden variables of the clusters. Next, classifiers were trained with the inputs of the simulated radiometer data and its corresponding label. The classifiers of a random decision forest (RDF), support vector machine (SVM), Gaussian na"ive bayes, feed forward artificial neural network (ANN), and a convolutional neural network (CNN) were trained. Over the tropical dataset, the best performing classifier was able to identify non-storm and storm clouds with over 80% accuracy in each class for a held-out test set. Over the non-tropical dataset, the best performing classifier was able to classify non-storm clouds with over 90% accuracy and storm clouds with over 40% accuracy. Additionally both sets of classifiers were shown to be resilient to instrument noise.