A Comparative Evaluation Of Multiple Meteorological Datasets For The Rice Yield Prediction At The County Level In South Korea

Because the growth of paddy rice is affected by meteorological factors, the selection of appropriate meteorological variables is essential to build a rice yield prediction model. This paper examines the suitability of multiple meteorological datasets for the rice yield modeling in South Korea, 1996-2019, and a hindcast experiment for rice yield using a machine learning method by considering the nonlinear relationships between meteorological variables and the rice yield. In addition to the ASOS in-situ observations, we used CRU-JRA ver. 2.1 and ERA5 reanalysis. From the multiple meteorological datasets, we extracted the four common variables (air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, and precipitation) and analyzed the characteristics of each data and the associations with rice yields. CRU-JRA ver. 2.1 showed an overall agreement with the other datasets. While relative humidity had a rare relationship with rice yields, solar radiation showed a somewhat high correlation with rice yields. Using the air temperature, solar radiation, and precipitation of July, August, and September, we built a random forest model for the hindcast experiments of rice yields. The model with CRU-JRA ver. 2.1 showed the best performance with a correlation coefficient of 0.772. The solar radiation in the prediction model had the most significant importance among the variables, which is in accordance with the generic agricultural knowledge. This paper has an implication for selecting from multiple meteorological datasets for rice yield modeling.