Label-Efficient Learning for Ground-Based Sky-Image Classification: A Benchmark of Transfer Learning, Active Learning, and Pseudo-Labeling on GCD

Accurate ground-based cloud classification is important for atmospheric monitoring, solar-energy forecasting, aviation weather assessment, and climate observation systems. However, reliable sky-image annotation is time-consuming, especially when cloud types are visually similar or mixed. We study the label efficiency of deep learning for ground-based cloud classification using the Ground-based Cloud Dataset (GCD). Rather than proposing a new architecture, we benchmark three practical strategies under limited annotation budgets: supervised transfer learning, uncertainty-based active learning, and high-confidence pseudo-labeling. An ImageNet-pretrained ResNet50 is used as a common frozen backbone, with experiments repeated over five random seeds for label budgets from 1% to 100% of the training labels. Supervised transfer learning is already highly label-efficient: test accuracy increases from 0.635 ± 0.018 with 1% labels to 0.730 ± 0.002 with 40% labels, approaching the full-label result of 0.735 ± 0.003. Active learning and pseudo-labeling are competitive with supervised sampling and provide small improvements for some metrics and budgets, but neither gives a large or consistent aggregate gain. Diagnostic analyses show that accepted pseudo-labels are reliable, with accuracy from 0.946 to 0.977, but biased toward easier high-confidence sky-type groups. In contrast, uncertainty sampling preferentially queries visually challenging groups, including Mixed and the confusable Stratocumulus and Cumulonimbus groups, but these targeted acquisitions yield only modest gains. Overall, transfer learning substantially reduces annotation requirements for GCD, while simple active and semi-supervised strategies provide limited additional benefit over a strong supervised baseline.