Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Atmospheric Research
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atmosres

Prediction of heat waves in Pakistan using quantile regression forests T

a,c,⁎ a b a,c a
Najeebullah Khan , Shamsuddin Shahid , Liew Juneng , Kamal Ahmed , Tarmizi Ismail ,
Nadeem Nawazc
a
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia
b
Faculty of Science and Technology, University Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, UKM, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
c
Faculty of Water Resource Management, Lasbela University of Agriculture Water and Marine Sciences (LUAWMS), 90150 Uthal, Balochistan, Pakistan

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The rising temperature due to global warming has caused an increase in frequency and severity of heat waves
Extreme temperature across the world. A statistical model known as Quantile Regression Forests (QRF) has been proposed in this study
Heat waves for the prediction of heat waves in Pakistan for different time-lags using synoptic climate variables. The gridded
Synoptic climate daily temperature data of Princeton's Global Meteorological Forcing (PGF) was used for the reconstruction of
Quantile regression forest
historical heat waves and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis data was used to
Pakistan
select the appropriate set of predictors to forecast the heat waves using QRF. The performance of QRF in pre-
diction of heat waves was compared with classical random forest (RF). The results showed superior performance
of QRF in detecting heat waves compared to RF. The QRF model was able to predict the triggering and departure
dates of heat waves with 1 to 10 days lead times at various levels of accuracy. The model was able to predict the
triggering dates of 2 to 3 out of 3 heat waves in the month of May, 8 to 12 out of 13 heat waves in June and 2 out
of 2 in July and the departure dates of 3 out of 3 in May, 10 out of 13 in June and 2 out of 2 in July with an
accuracy of up to ± 5 days. The evaluation of different atmospheric variables revealed that wind and relative
humidity are the major factors that define the heat waves in Pakistan. The research proved the advantage of QRF
model to predict the conditional quantiles that help to explain some extreme behaviors of temperature.

1. Introduction
Heat waves have gained wide attention among the extreme weather
events owing to their widespread impacts on human health, society and
ecosystem (Gao et al., 2018). Increase in heat wave frequency have
been reported in recent years in different parts of the world due to
global warming induced rises in temperature (Russo et al., 2014). A
further increase in the number of days with potentially fatal tempera-
ture conditions across the globe during the end of the present century
has been projected (Mora et al., 2017). The consequences of the in-
creased exposure to heat stress on human health could be dramatic for
populated regions if proper mitigation measures are not taken
(Sherwood and Huber, 2010). The European heat wave of 2003 and the
Russian heat wave of 2010 caused thousands of deaths (De Bono et al.,
2004; Dole et al., 2011). The Australian heat wave in 2009 caused
hundreds of deaths and huge economic losses (Siddaway and Petelina,
2011). The Southeast Asian heat wave in 2018 caused death of millions
of livestock and devastating damages to agriculture in Korean peninsula
and Japan. The South Asian heat waves in 2015 and 2017 caused death
of hundreds of people and damages to crops (Khan et al., 2018c).
Development of an early warning system is thus, very important for the
mitigation of the impacts of growing frequency of heat waves in the
context of climate change.
Defining heat waves is one of the major hindrances in their fore-
casting and analyses. Heat wave is usually defined base on location and
time (You et al., 2017; Perkins and Alexander, 2013; Robinson, 2001).
Most popularly, it is defined as excessive sensible heat accumulates that
results a thermal load (Sanderson et al., 2017; You et al., 2017). Based
on this thermal load concept, heat waves are defined using different
temperature thresholds and periods (Khan et al., 2018c; Perkins-
Kirkpatrick and Gibson, 2017; Perkins and Alexander, 2013; Pezza
et al., 2012; Saeed et al., 2017). A common threshold for all geographic
or climatic regions is not applicable as temperature varies widely be-
tween geographical regions and therefore, percentile based threshold is
often used for defining heat waves (Khan et al., 2018c). In the present
study, the definition of heat waves proposed by Khan et al. (2018c) is
adopted for forecasting heat waves. According to Khan et al. (2018c),
the heat wave in Pakistan is defined as daily maximum temperature
above 95th percentile of maximum temperature of the base year
(1971–2000) for at least 5 consecutive days (Khan et al., 2018c).

⁎
Corresponding author at: School of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
E-mail address: najeebmarri@gmail.com (N. Khan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2019.01.024
Received 5 November 2018; Received in revised form 15 January 2019; Accepted 27 January 2019
Available online 28 January 2019
0169-8095/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
N. Khan et al. Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11

Early warning is considered as the most important mitigation

measures of disaster. Temperature forecasting is the key factor for the
development of prediction model of heat waves. Different temperature
prediction models have been introduced in recent years for the fore-
casting of heat waves which can be broadly classified as dynamical and
statistical (Liu et al., 2012a; Repelli and Nobre, 2004). The dynamical
forecasting models are based on the laws of physics. The major ad-
vantages of dynamical models are their ability to capture nonlinear
interactions of the atmosphere, land and ocean, and adaptation to the
shifts in climate. In statistical model, relationship between synoptic
climatic variables and local temperature are established for the pre-
diction of temperature. The statistical models are simple to implement
and operate and therefore, extensively used for the prediction of the
seasonal climate (Barnston et al., 1999; Fawcett et al., 2005; Folland
et al., 1991; Landsea and Knaff, 2000; Rajeevan et al., 2007; Shabbar
and Barnston, 1996). The simulated climatology of dynamic models is
not always aligned with that of the corresponding observations
(Graham et al., 2005; Lim et al., 2011) and therefore, large errors in
prediction at regional and local scales are often experienced. Statistical
models are often preferred for prediction of temperature in such si- Fig. 1. Geographic location and topography of Pakistan.
tuation.
Heat waves are short-term drastic phenomena which often very
reconstruct the historical heat waves and the National Centers for En-
difficult to forecast. Therefore, heat wave forecasting is always asso-
vironmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis synoptic climate variables
ciated with high uncertainty (Zhu and Li, 2018). Several statistical and
were used for the selection appropriate set of predictors for the fore-
machine learning models have been developed for the prediction of
casting of heat waves with 1–10 days lead times using QRF. The ob-
temperature and temperature related extremes (Gao et al., 2018; Hjort
tained results are compared with that of the RF. This is the first attempt
et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2012a; Naing and Htike, 2015; Zhu and Li, 2018).
of prediction of heat waves using QRF. It is expected that the present
Hjort et al. (2011) used generalized linear regression model and
study will initiate further studies to explore the capability of QRF in
boosted regression tree for the prediction of temperature. Liu et al.
prediction of different weather extremes.
(2012a) applied support vector machine on a wavelet decomposed
series for the prediction of temperature. Naing and Htike (2015) de-
veloped random forest regression model to forecast the temperature 2. Study area and data
variations. Gao et al. (2018) employed a physical empirical model for
the prediction of heat waves over western China. Most of the models Pakistan (latitudes 23°30ˈN–37°30ˈN and longitudes 61°E–78°E) lo-
showed low skill in prediction of extreme temperature and therefore, cated in South Asia has an area of 796,095 km2 (Fig. 1). It has a pre-
found not suitable for the prediction of heat waves. dominantly arid climate and characterized by hot summer and cool or
The Quantile Regression Forests (QRF) has attracted the attention of cold winter. The climate of the country can be classified into four
extreme event modelers in recent years due to their capability of seasons based on surface temperature (Ahmed et al., 2014; Khan et al.,
probabilistic forecasting. The QRF was developed to take the ad- 2018b; Khan et al., 2018c): (i) cool and dry winter (December to Feb-
vantages of both Quantile Regression (QR) and RF together. The QRF is ruary); (ii) hot and dry spring (March to May); (iii) rainy monsoon
a type of regression where unlike ordinary regression, the best fit line is summer (June to August); and (iv) autumn (September to November).
estimated for a given quantile of the response variable (Meinshausen, However, the onset and duration of these seasons vary according to
2006). The QR can be used to explore more useful predictive re- location due to significant spatial and temporal variability of climate
lationships between variables when the relationship between the means over the country. Temperature of Pakistan ranges from winter
of the variables is very weak or not present (Brennan et al., 2015). minimum and summer maximum of −13.0 °C and 19.5 °C respectively
Therefore, when a prediction of extremes (such as temperature above in the northern Himalaya region to 18.0 °C and 35.2 °C in the Sindh
95-th percentile) is required, it can be utilized for the estimation of plains located in the southern coastal region. Higher temperature is also
regression for extreme values only. However, QR only uses linear re- noticed in the western and south western region of Balochistan with
gression algorithm for prediction of different quantiles and thus, often annual average of minimum and maximum temperature ranging be-
yield large errors in prediction of non-linear values of quantiles. The RF tween 13.2 °C and 33.6 °C respectively and in eastern Punjab between
(Breiman, 2001) is a powerful regression technique which can be used 13.3 °C and 34.8°. The highest variations in temperature are observed in
for the development of high-dimensional non-linear regression models. the northwest and central Pakistan.
Therefore, QRF can reduce the asymmetrical errors in QR due to the
assumption of linearity (Meinshausen, 2006; Weerts et al., 2011). 2.1. Gridded temperature data
The main objective of the present study is to explore the capability
of QRF to predict heat waves with various level of accuracy. The pro- Pakistan Meteorological Department has only 96 stations for
posed model was applied for Pakistan which is one of the most vul- weather monitoring over 796,095 km2 of land with high topographic
nerable regions of the world to heat waves. The country has experi- variability. It is difficult to analyze the spatial variability of temperature
enced some of the worst heat waves in last few years, notably in 2015 of the country with this limited number of stations (Ahmed et al., 2014;
and 2017 which caused deaths of thousands of people (Khan et al., Khan et al., 2018a). Gridded data are generally used for the assessment
2018c). Number of studies reported increasing heat waves in Pakistan of spatial variability of climate where long-term densely gauge data are
and neighboring countries due to climate change (Azhar et al., 2014; not available. A large number of gridded datasets have been developed
Cheema, 2015; Jiang et al., 2012; Taghavi, 2010). Therefore, devel- in last two decades for climatological studies in data scarce regions
opment of models for forecasting heat waves is very important for Pa- (Ahmed et al., 2017). In the present study, the daily gridded maximum
kistan. The Princeton's Global Meteorological Forcing (PGF) daily temperature of PGF was used due to its higher spatial resolution of
maximum temperature data for the period 1948–2010 was used to 0.25° × 0.25°. The PGF dataset is developed for the period 1948–2010

2
N. Khan et al.
by merging the reanalysis datasets of the National Centers for En-
vironmental Prediction (NCEP) and National Centre for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR) and a collection of global observed databases
(Sheffield et al., 2006). The high resolution and longer period has made
the PGF daily temperature most compatible for the assessment of heat
waves (Khan et al., 2018c). The PGF dataset has been widely used in
recent climate studies at global (Sheffield et al., 2006; Sheffield et al.,
2012) and regional scales including Asia (Aadhar and Mishra, 2017;
Aich et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2012; Zhu et al., 2017). The PGF has also
been validated and used for estimation of heat wave related indices in
Pakistan (Khan et al., 2018c).
2.2. NCEP/NCAR reanalysis dataset
The large-scale atmospheric predictors were derived from the
NCEP/NCAR reanalysis. The NCEP/ NCAR reanalysis data is a con-
tinually updated gridded data that represents the state of the earth's
atmosphere at a spatial resolution of 2.5° × 2.5° since 1948 (Kalnay
et al., 1996). A number of reanalysis of large-scale atmospheric vari-
ables are available. Among them European Centre for Medium-Range
Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and NCEP are most widely used. Studies
revealed that ECMWF tend to underestimate the temperature compared
to NCEP (Liu et al., 2012b; Mooney et al., 2011). The NCEP is also
found better in detecting inter-annual variability of climate (Béranger
et al., 2006; Gleisner et al., 2005), which is most important for pre-
diction of extremes. A number of studies also reported superior per-
formance of NCEP in representing the observational data (He and Zhao,
2018). The NCEP data has been used in several studies to identify the
potential predictors for temperature forecasting (Dodla et al., 2017; Gao
et al., 2018; Gao et al., 2014; Maini et al., 2003; Zhu et al., 2017).
Therefore, it is used in the present study for the development of models.
Description of the variables used for the development of models is given
in Table 1.
3. Methodology
3.1. Methodological process
The procedure used for the development of QRF models for the
prediction of heat waves are outlines below:
1. The association between NCEP variables and areal average of PGF
maximum temperature of Pakistan were estimated to identify the
highly correlated variables.
2. The highly correlated NCEP variables were used to select the pre-
dictors using step-wise multiple regression with areal average of
PGF maximum temperature as predictand and the highly correlated
NCEP variables as predictors. The selected predictors were stan-
dardized to remove the influence of unit and range.
3. The QRF and RF models were developed to predict daily maximum
temperature of Pakistan using the predictor set selected in step 2.
The models were calibrated for the period 1948–1991 and then
validated for the period 1992–2010.
4. Separate models were developed using separate set of predictors for
Table 1
Potential predictors with symbol and the pressure level used in the present
study for the development of heat wave prediciton model.
Atmospheric variable Symbol Pressure level (hPa)
Air temerparue at 925, 850, 700,
Geopotential height hgt 925, 850, 700,
Relative humidity rh 925, 850, 700,
U wind uw 925, 850, 700,
V wind vw 925, 850, 700,
Sea level pressure slp surface
Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11
the months of May, June and July and the performance of the
models in prediction of the trigger and the departure dates of heat
waves for different lead times ranging from 1 to 10 day(s) were
estimated.
5. Obtained results were analyzed to understand the synoptic climate
responsible for heat waves in Pakistan.
Details of the methods used in the study are given in following
sections.
3.2. Random forest
One of the ways to solve non-linear complex function is to develop a
regression tree to find adequate partitions of the covariate space X. The
regression tree can be considered as a piecewise-constant prediction at
each partition. However, the tree method has some disadvantages
(Hastie et al., 2009): (i) trees usually have high variance due to its
greedy split process, which implies that a small change in training data
can give very different splits. (ii) since the tree estimate is not smooth, it
may not be appropriate when the underlying function is smooth.
To overcome these problems, some advanced tree methods such as
bagging, random forests and boosting were developed by aggregating
many trees, which can be used to construct more powerful prediction
model. In this study, we used random forests (RF) developed by
Breiman (2001). The procedure used in RF for development of regres-
sion model are summarized as follows: (1) bootstraping samples from
training data and random selection of m (< p) variables at each split, n
number trees T(θt) are developed, where θt denotes the parameter
vector that determines how the t-th tree is grown. (2) the prediction is
obtained from the average output of n-th single trees as
n
ƒ(x ) = Ê(Y | X = x) = ∑i =1 ωi (x ) Yi (1)
where
ntree
∑t = 1 ωi (x , Ɵt ) 1(Xi ϵRl (x , Ө) )
ωi (x ) = , ωi (x , Ɵ) =
ntree (j: Xj ϵRl (x , Ө) ) (2)
The random selection of m (< p) predictors at each split is a key
concept of RF, which provides an enhancement over bagging. In the
case that there are a few strong predictors in the data, all the bagged
trees might be similar due to the effect of the strong predictors. The
corresponding predictions are also highly correlated and therefore, the
resulting aggregation of predictions does not lead substantial reduction
in variance. RF deals with this problem by taking random selection of
predictor variables, which may allow the strong predictors not to affect
the tree; thus, it results in decorrelating the trees. In the study RF was
used to compare the results obtained using QRF.
3.3. Quantile regression forests
The QR allows analyzing different quantiles of data and therefore,
has distinct advantages over the conventional regression models. The
linear QR model is the analogy to traditional linear regression model
except that the regression coefficients are quantile dependent as shown
in Eq. (3), where q is the quantile which ranges between 0 and 1; aq and
bq are regression coefficients which depend on the selected quantile, q
and are estimated by minimizing the sum of asymmetrically weighted
absolute deviations (Eq. (4)).
yq = aq + bq x + εq (3)
500
500
∑ q |yi − aq − bq x i| + ∑ (1 − q) ∣yi − aq − bq x i ∣
500
i : y ≥ aq + bq xi i : y < aq + bq xi (4)
500
where, y denotes the temperature and x is the year of record. Unlike the
500
linear regression model, the regression coefficients of linear QR (aq and
bq in Eq. (3)) cannot be found analytically. The slope bq significantly
3
N. Khan et al.
different from zero is an indication of a linear trend at the q-th quantile
of temperature when the corresponding p-value is < 0.05 (Chamaillé-
Jammes et al., 2007).
Meinshausen (2006) combined QR and RF and developed the
quantile regression forest (QRF) to estimate conditional quantiles that
may provide rich information and explain some extreme behaviors of
observation. The conditional distribution function of Y for X = x is
defined as F(y|X = x) = P(Y ≤ y|X = x) = E(1(Y≤y)|X = x). For esti-
mation of F(y|X = x), Meinshausen (2006) considered a weighted em-
pirical cumulative distribution function by substituting 1(Y≤y) for Y in
Eq. (1) as
n
F = (y | X = x) = ∑i =1 ωi (x ) Y(Y ≤ y) (5)
where weights, ωi (x) are the same as those of RF defined in Eq. (2).
Thus, the corresponding conditional quantile of level τ can be obtained
as,
Qτ (y | x ) = inf(y: FY | x (y | x ) ≥ τ ) (6)
The procedure for computing F(y|X = x) in QRF is almost identical
to the ordinary RF. The only difference is that QRF computes an em-
pirical cumulative distribution function of response variable for each
partition instead of locally weighted average. Meinshausen (2006) used
a plug-in estimator to get the conditional quantiles instead of check
function-based-loss minimization.
3.4. Selection of climate domain
The NCEP data from 357 grid points covering a climate domain of
the study area were used for the selection of predictors. It is crucial to
select an adequate size of climate domain for accurate prediction of
temperature. The aerial extent of the climatic domain for the selection
of predictors is usually decided based on the mechanism of synoptic
climate that determined the temperature of the study area (Kannan and
Ghosh, 2011). According to Najafi et al. (2010), the domain size, nei-
ther should be too small that may not capture atmospheric phenomena,
nor too large to increase the computation cost and time. A domain
consisting of 357 grid points covering the region between latitudes 40-
90E and longitude 10-50 N (Fig. 2) was selected, considering that it is
sufficient to cover the influence of circulation patterns responsible for
daily temperature of Pakistan.
3.5. Selection of predictors
The selection of predictors is one of the most important steps in the
development of any forecasting models. Selection of predictors widely
varies according to climatic regions and seasons as the influence of
large-scale atmospheric variables on local climatic variables varies with
climate and season (Anandhi et al., 2009; Beecham et al., 2014;
Moradkhani and Meier, 2010; Najafi et al., 2010). In this study, the
predictors were selected using stepwise multiple linear regression
method (MLR). The stepwise MLR sequentially add or remove all pre-
dictors in a regression model to find the predictors that produce best
predictive model (Pour et al., 2014; Sachindra et al., 2018; Sachindra
et al., 2013). For the selection of predictors, all the selected NCEP
variables from 357 grid points at four different pressure levels 925, 850,
700 and 500 hPa were individually correlated with areal average PGF
maximum temperature of Pakistan separately for the months of May,
June and July. The 850 and 925 hPa variables are widely used for
forecasting temperature as those low altitude variables can define
temperature more accurately. The variables of 700 and 500 hPa better
represent the advection and the warm and cold fronts which are also
important for forecasting temperature extremes. Therefore, NCEP
variables of those pressure levels were used in this study.
To remove the predictors having low skill in prediction, the top 1%
of the highly correlated predictors were primarily selected for each
4
Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11
month. Selected predictors were then used to find the final set of pre-
dictors using stepwise MLR (Pour et al., 2014; Pour et al., 2018;
Sachindra et al., 2018; Sachindra et al., 2013; Sachindra and Perera,
2018).
The MLR is a statistical process which can be used for the estimation
of the relationship between a dependent variable (predictand) and
multiple independent variables (predictors). The basic equation of MLR
can be given as:
N
Y = αO + ∑J =1 αJ XJ (7)
where Y is the dependent variable (predictand), Xj is predictor set, n is
the number of predictors, and alpha is the model parameters which
show the influence of each predictor on predictand (Aiken et al., 2003;
Pour et al., 2018). Stepwise regression process enters and removes
predictors in MLR based on partial F-tests until there is no acceptable
reason to enter or remove more predictor, and thus it allows selection of
the best subset of predictors to fulfil some well-defined objective cri-
terion (Sachindra et al., 2018). Three sets of predictors were selected in
this study for three different months (May, June and July) for the de-
velopment of QRF prediction models for each month.
4. Results
4.1. Synoptic pattern of climate during peak summer
The spatial distribution of correlation between maximum tempera-
ture of Pakistan and sea level pressure (SLP) during high temperature
months of May to July (MJJ) is shown in Fig. 3(a). The figure represents
the association of a selected variable with maximum temperature. The
high correlation of SLP with maximum temperature indicates the po-
tential of SLP as a predictor of heat waves. The synoptic circulation
pattern during MJJ is shown in Fig. 3 (b). A lower wind speed was
noticed over Pakistan during MJJ, where most of the wind is observed
to be easterlies flowing from India. However, a flow from the eastern
mountainous region was also noticed as shown in Fig. 3(b), which on
the way to Pakistan gets warmer as it flows through the hotter regions
over the India. Winds play a major role in heating land surface (Gao
et al., 2018). When a low-level anticyclonic (high pressure) occurs over
the study area, the temperature of the local surface increases by adia-
batic heating resulting from the anomalous descending motion and
increased solar radiation caused by the reduced cloud cover. An an-
ticyclonic activity was also noticed over the Pakistan during the heat
waves, showing a much warmer summer then the adjacent region
(Khan et al., 2018c).
4.2. Relationship of atmoshperic variables with PGF maximum temperature
The spatial variability of the correlation of different atmosperic
variables and PGF maximum temperature over Pakistan was assessed to
understand the synoptic phenomena responsible for high temperature
events in Pakistan. For illustration, only the the relationship of SLP with
maximum temerpature for the period 1948–2010 is shown in Fig. 3(a).
The SLP over the Indian ocean particularly in the Persian gulf showed a
strong negative correlation (−0.36 to −0.12) while the SLP in the
Saudi Peninsula showed a positive correlation with the maximum
temperature of Pakistan. It indicates that heat waves in Pakistan occurs
when there is a low SLP in the Indian Ocean.
4.3. Selection of potential predictors
The PGF maximum temperaure over Pakistan showed a positive
correlation with the NCEP variables at 925 and 850 hPa pressure levels.
The highest correlations were found with geopotential height, relative
humidity, u-wind, v-wind and SLP. Both the positive and negative
correlations were observed. The correlations with NCEP variables of
N. Khan et al.
Fig. 2. Climate domain used in the present study, the NCEP grid points are shown using drak grey circle and the locaiton of selected predictors (Table 2) are shown
using larger black circle.
different pressure levels are shown using box plots in Fig. 4. The box
plots were prepared using correlation values estimated at different
NCEP grid points. The lower and upper extends of the box repreesent
the 25th and 75th quantiles respectively, while the middle line re-
presents the median of the corelation coefficient. The correlations were
found to reduce with pressure levels for all the NCEP variables except v-
wind. Relative humidty showed the highest correlation with the PGF
maximum temerpature, −0.63, −0.62, −0.48 and −0.35 for for
pressure levels, 925, 850, 700 and 500 hPa respectively.
The highly correlated NCEP variabels were used in a stepwise MLR
model to select the NCEP variables that perform best in prediction when
applied together. The predictor set selected by MLR are given in
Table 2. The relative humidity and v-wind component at different lo-
cations at lower toposphere (925 hPa) were found as the best pre-
dictors. The locations of the predictors are shown in Fig. 2. The max-
imum temperature was found to be influenced by wind components
from the eastern Pakistan and from the Persian Gulf.
4.4. Historical heat wave and their prediction
The QRF model was developed for the prediction of daily maximum
temperature and the heat waves using the selected predictors. The PGF
maximum temperature data for all the grid points over Pakistan were
averaged and then used for the reconstruction of historical heat waves.
Similarly, simulated maximum temperature by QRF and RF were used
to estimate the heat waves for comparison with observed heat waves.
The QRF and RF models were calibrated for the period 1948–1991 and
validated for the period 1992–2010. The triggering and departing dates
of heat waves estimated using PGF were compared with QRF and RF
simulated heat waves to assess the prediction capability of the models.
The PGF data estimated a total of 18 heat wave during the
5
Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11
validation period (1992–2010) with 3 events in May, 13 in June and 2
in July. The QRF and RF models were developed to forecast maximum
temperature for different lead times ranging from 1-day to 10-day.
Table 3 shows the skill of QRF and RF models based on their ability to
simulate the trigger date of the heat waves in May, June and July.
Table 4 presents ability of the models to predict the departure dates of
heat waves. The skill of prediction models was assessed based on their
ability to predict the dates exactly (0 day) or one to five day(s) before or
after ( ± 1 to ± 5). If the models failed to detect the heat wave with an
accuracy of up to ± 5 days, it was considered that the model is not
capable to detect the heat wave.
The results presented in Table 3 shows that the QRF model per-
formed well in prediction of heat waves during May with 1- to 5-day
lead time. For 1-day lead time, the QRF was able to predict triggering
dates of 3 heat waves with ± 1, ± 3 and ± 5-day accuracy. Therefore,
the total failure of not being able to predict heat waves are exactly or
within ± 5 days was 0 for May. On the other hand, RF was able to
predict the triggering date of only 1 heat wave with an accuracy of ± 1.
For rest of the cases, it was not able to predict the triggering dates
within ± 5 days. The performance for other lead times also showed
better performance of QRF compared to RF. The QRF was able to pre-
dict the triggering dates of 2 heat waves with an accuracy of ± 3 days
for all the lead times. The RF was successful for only 1 case in detecting
the heat wave with 1-day lead time. The RF model failed completely to
predict heat waves with a lead time of > 2 days.
Total 13 heat waves were estimated by PGF in June. Out of which,
both models detected the triggering dates of 6 heat waves with an ac-
curacy of ± 1 day with a lead time of 1, 2 and 3 day(s). The QRF de-
tected 2 more heat waves with an accuracy of ± 2 days and one with an
accuracy of ± 5 days. Therefore, the QRF was able to detect the trig-
gering dates of 9 heat waves in June compared to 6 by RF. The number
N. Khan et al. Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11

Fig. 3. (a) Average maximum temeprature of Pakistan correlated with the sea level pressure over the climate domain for the months of May, June and July (red
showing positive corelation while blue showing negative colrelation) during 1948–2010, (b) The direction and magnitude of the wind drived from u-wind and v-wind
at 925 hPa. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

of accurate predictions of heat waves by QRF and RF were 8, 8, 9 and 6,
5, 4 respectively for 5, 7 and 10-day lead time respectively with an
accuracy of ± 1 day. The QRF was able to predict up to 12 heat waves
with 5-day lead time at an accuracy of ± 5 days, while RF was suc-
cessful for only 7 events with same accuracy. Comparatively a much
higher rate of failure was noticed for RF (31–54%) than QRF (8–38%)
in prediction with different lead times.
The QRF model also performed well for the month of July, where
the model predicted 1 heat wave in July with an accuracy of ± 2 day
for up to 5 days lead time and 1 event with ± 3 days accuracy for 7 and
10-day lead time. Both heat waves were detected with an accuracy
of ± 5 days by QRF, while RF failed to detect the triggering dates of any
of the heat waves of this month.
It is also important to assess the model skill in detection of the de-
parture dates of the heat waves. The QRF detected the departure dates
of 2 out of 3 heat waves in May with an accuracy of ± 1 day, while RF
detected only one heat wave with same accuracy for 1-day lead time
(Table 4). The QRF also detected the departure date of the rest 1 heat
wave with an accuracy of ± 2 day which the RF was failed to detect
with 1-day lead time. The forecasting with other lead times also showed
a similar pattern. However, the RF showed better detection of the de-
parture dates of heat waves in the month of June. It detected 6, 5, 4, 5,
5 and 3 heat waves with a lead time of 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10 days,
compared 3, 5, 3, 4, 4 and 4 for QRF. However, the QRF was found to
detect the higher number of departure dates with lower accuracy
compared to RF. It was able to detect 7 out of 13 heat wave departures
with different accuracies for all the lead times. Total 8 of the heat waves
were detected with an accuracy of ± 3 days by both the models with a
lead time of 3 days.
For the month of July, the QRF detected all the departure dates with
an accuracy of ± 1 day while RF failed to detect any. The RF was also
failed to detect the triggering dates of heat waves in the month of July,
which indicates that RF failed to simulate the extreme temperature for
the month of July.
4.5. Reconstruction of historic heat waves
To explain the physical linkage between predicting variables and
the heat waves, the behavior of different atmospheric variables during
heat waves was assessed. The synoptic climate during the recorded heat

6
N. Khan et al. Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11

Fig. 4. The correlations of different NCEP variables with maximum temperatur of Pakistan. The box plots were prepared using correlation values estimated at
different NCEP grid points. The lower and upper extends of the box represent the 25th and 75th quantiles respectively, while the middle line represents the median of
the corelation coefficient.

Table 2 Fig. 5 shows the wind direction and magnitude during the heat
The locations of predictors used for the development of forecasting models of wave overlapped with air temperature, geo potential height and re-
maximum temperature of Pakistan. lative humidity at 925 hPa. The air temperature was noticed relatively
Predictors Lat Lon Predictors Lat Lon high with 33.97 to 35.85 °C in the southern parts extended to the Saudi
Peninsula while a low temperature was noticed over the northern re-
hgt700 27.5 72.5 uw700 30 75 gion of the domain. An anticyclonic activity was noticed commencing a
rh925 32.5 70 vw925 20 55
high pressure during the heat wave indicating adiabatic heating re-
uw850 25 52.5 vw500 30 75
slp 27.5 77.5 sulting from the anomalous descending motion and increase solar ra-
diation caused by the reduced cloud cover. Very low wind speed was
also noticed over the region during this period. The heat wave was
wave of 18–31 May 2006 is presented in Fig. 5 as an example for this found to accompany a lower geopotential height of 671–693. A low
purpose. For illustration, wind component of speed and direction were humidity was observed during the heat wave which also contributed to
overlaid on the potential atmospheric variables as shown in Fig. 5. The form a high pressure resulting in an anticyclonic activity and the re-
capability of QRF was also assessed graphically for this heat wave. duction of the cloud cover. The air temperature and the geopotential

Table 3
The performance of QRF and RF models in detection of triggering date of heat waves with different lead times during model validation (1992–2010).
Lag day(s) ± 1 (day) ± 2 (days) ± 3 (days) > 3 & ≤5 (days) Failure

QRF RF QRF RF QRF RF QRF RF QRF RF

May 1-Day 1 1 – – – – – 1 2
2-Day 2 2 – – – 1 3
3-Day 1 2 – – 3
5-Day 1 3 3 3
7-Day 2 3 3
10-Day 1 2 3 3
June 1-Day 6 6 8 – – – 9 – 4 7
2-Day 6 6 7 6 – – 8 – 5 7
3-Day 6 6 7 6 10 7 8 – 5 6
5-Day 8 6 9 6 10 7 12 7 1 4
7-Day 8 5 8 5 9 7 11 7 2 5
10-Day 9 4 9 4 9 7 11 7 2 5
July 1-Day 1 2 2
2-Day 1 2 2
3-Day 1 2 2
5-Day 1 2 2
7-Day 1 2 2
10-Day 1 2 2

7
N. Khan et al. Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11

Table 4
The performance of QRF and RF models in detection of departure date of heat waves with different lead times during model validation (1992–2010).
Lag day(s) ± 1 (day) ± 2 (days) ± 3 (days) > 3 & ≤ 5 (days) Failure

QRF RF QRF RF QRF RF QRF RF QRF RF

May 1-Day 1 1 1 1 2
2-Day 1 1 1 3 1 2
3-Day 1 1 1 3 1 2
5-Day 1 1 1 3 1 2
7-Day 1 1 1 3 1 2
10-Day 1 1 1 3 1 2
June 1-Day 3 6 7 7 8 8 10 9 3 4
2-Day 5 5 7 7 8 8 10 9 3 4
3-Day 3 4 7 8 8 8 10 9 3 4
5-Day 4 5 7 7 7 7 10 9 3 4
7-Day 4 5 7 6 7 6 10 7 3 6
10-Day 4 3 7 5 7 5 10 6 3 7
July 1-Day 2 2
2-Day 2 2
3-Day 2 2
5-Day 2
7-Day 2 2
10-Day 2 2

height were observed to associate inversely.
The performance of QRF and RF models was evaluated during the
heat wave of 18–31 May 2006 and shown in Fig. 6. The performance of
the models for 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10-day lead times are presented in Fig. 6.
The figure shows that the QRF model outperformed the RF for all the
lead times. The important part of detecting the heat wave event is the
detection of the triggering date. The results showed that QRF model
was able to predict the triggering date 1 day after the starting of heat
wave. Similar results were observed for other lead times. The QRF
model was also able to detect the departure date of the heat wave with
an accuracy of 3 days. On the other hand, the RF model was found to
fail to predict this heat wave.
5. Discussion
No study has been conducted in Pakistan so far for forecasting ex-
treme temperature and heat waves. While few studies have been con-
ducted for forecasting temperature in neighboring countries of
Pakistan, which reported very low skills of dynamical models in pre-
dicting both seasonal mean and extremely high temperature (Gao et al.,
2018). The statistical approaches are better in performance not only in
the temperature prediction but also in predicting different climatic
phenomena (Rajeevan et al., 2007). Gao et al. (2018) mentioned the
better capability of statistical approach is due to the fact that statistical
prediction model has higher advantage in capturing the heat waves.
Obtained results in this study establish the potential of QRF for the
prediction of extreme temperature and heat waves in Pakistan.
One of the desirable features of QRF model is that it's fitting can be
adjusted, which can help in detecting extreme temperatures. Using
different quartiles, the QRF can try to fit the model better for prediction
of extreme temperature. This capability of QRF has made it superior to
RF in prediction of heat waves. The QRF model was observed to cap-
ture > 70% of the triggering date of heat waves with an accuracy
of ± 3 days up to 10-day lead time for the month of June which is the
most potential month of the occurrence of heat waves in Pakistan. It is
also found to predict the triggering date of heat wave for 60% cases
with same accuracy in the month of May and 50% in the month of July.
The QRF was also found to predict the departing date of heat waves
with reasonable accuracy. The results clearly indicate the potential of
QRF in forecasting heat waves in Pakistan.
The results revealed that wind and relative humidity are the major
factors that define heat waves in Pakistan. The cloud cover was noticed
very less during the heat waves, which is due to the built up of an
anticyclic activity resulting from high pressure. The results of the pre-
sent study collaborate with the findings of the studies conducted in
China, neighboring Pakistan. Gao et al. (2018) argued that heat waves
in China are mostly controlled by the high-pressure anomaly.
Rapid and unsustainable urbanization has increased the effect of
urban heat island in many cities of Pakistan (Sajjad et al., 2015). More
frequent and sever heat waves due to climate change would have severe
impacts on urban heat island. The prevalence and aggravation of
number of diseases such as diarrhea, strokes, dysrhythmia, respiratory
distress, renal disease and mental disorders are found to increase during
extreme temperatures in urban areas of Pakistan. Most of the fatalities
in recent heat waves (2015 and 2017) are observed in Karachi, the
biggest and the most populated city of Pakistan. This indicates the
aggregated effect of urban heat islands with the heat waves have made
the public health in urban Pakistan highly vulnerable.
General circulation models projected a higher rise in temperature in
Pakistan compared to global average, which will certainly cause more
intense and frequent heat waves the country in future (Escape, 2015; Im
et al., 2017; Solomon et al., 2007). Therefore, it can be anticipated that
losses of lives and economy of Pakistan due to heat waves will increase
in near future if proper adaptation and mitigation measures are not
taken. This emphasizes the need of skillful and reliable forecasting
models for the prediction of heat waves in order to deal with the risks
and to take adequate coping responses (Lowe et al., 2016). The QRF
model developed in this study can be used as a potential tool for
forecasting heat waves of Pakistan for the mitigation of it's impacts.
6. Conclusions
A novel approach based on QRF has been proposed in this study for
the prediction of heat waves in Pakistan. The performance of the QRF
model was assessed based on their ability to forecast the heat wave
triggering and departure dates with different lead times. The perfor-
mance of the QRF model was also compared with RF to show its effi-
cacy in prediction. The study revealed that relative humidity and wind
components are the most important factors for the forecasting of ex-
treme temperature and heat waves of Pakistan with different lead
times. The forecasting of heat waves using QRF showed very encoura-
ging results, which indicates higher capability of statistical models in
prediction of extreme temperature events. The triggering date of heat
waves was possible to predict for 50% to 70% cases with certain level of
accuracy using QRF. The results suggested that the QRF can explain
some extreme behaviors of temperature which can be utilized for the

8
N. Khan et al. Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11

Fig. 5. The magnitude and direction of wind speed at 925 hPa overlaid on the maps of (a) air temperature (b) geopotential height and (c) relative humidity during the
heat wave of 18–31 May 2006 in Pakistan.

9
N. Khan et al. Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11

40 One Day 40 Two Day

38 38

36 36

34 34

32 32
15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 2 4 6 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 2 4 6
Obs QRF Obs QRF
RF 95th Percentile RF 95th Percentile

40 Three Day 40 Five Day

38 38

36 36

34 34

32 32
15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 2 4 6 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 2 4 6
Obs QRF Obs QRF
RF 95th Percentile RF 95th Percentile

40 Seven Day 40 Five Day

38 38

36 36

34 34

32 32
15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 2 4 6 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 2 4 6
Obs QRF Obs QRF
RF 95th Percentile RF 95th Percentile

Fig. 6. The performance of QRF and RF models in prediction of heat wave of 18–31 May 2006. The correlation coefficients between PGF and model predicted
temperature were 0.59, 0.61, 0.61, 0.72, 0.72 and 0.65 for QRF and 0.59, 0.26, 0.24, 0.34, 0.31, 0.29 for RF for 1, 2, 3, 5, 7- and 10-day lead times respectively. The
x-axis represents the temperature in °C and y-axis represents heat wave days.

forecasting of heat waves. Pakistan is one of the most hard-hit heat
wave prone nations in the world, where hundreds of people die almost
every year due to extreme temperature. The models developed in this
study can be used for the forecasting of heat waves in Pakistan in order
to mitigate their severe impacts. Further studies can be conducted to
compare the performance of QRF with other state-of-art machine
learning models in predicting heat waves. Besides, models can be de-
veloped for forecasting different characteristics of heat waves such as
heat wave duration and intensity. The skills of QRF and other statistical
models can be compared with dynamical models to show their ad-
vantages and disadvantages.
Acknowledgment
The authors are grateful to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for pro-
viding financial support for this research through GUP grant no. 19H44
and 14J27.
References
Aadhar, S., Mishra, V., 2017. High-resolution near real-time drought monitoring in South
Asia. Sci. Data 4, 170145.
Ahmed, K., Shahid, S., Harun, S.B., 2014. Spatial interpolation of climatic variables in a
predominantly arid region with complex topography. Environ. Syst. Dec. 34,
555–563.
Ahmed, K., Shahid, S., Ali, R., Harun, S., Wang, X., 2017. Evaluation of the performance
of gridded precipitation products over Balochistan Province, Pakistan. Desalination
1 (14).
Aich, V., et al., 2017. Climate change in Afghanistan deduced from reanalysis and co-
ordinated regional climate downscaling experiment (CORDEX)—South Asia simula-
tions. Climate 5, 38.
Aiken, L.S., West, S.G., Pitts, S.C., 2003. Multiple Linear Regression Handbook of
Psychology. pp. 481–507.
Anandhi, A., Srinivas, V., Kumar, D.N., Nanjundiah, R.S., 2009. Role of predictors in
downscaling surface temperature to river basin in India for IPCC SRES scenarios using
support vector machine. Int. J. Climatol. 29, 583–603.
Azhar, G.S., et al., 2014. Heat-related mortality in India: Excess all-cause mortality as-
sociated with the 2010 Ahmedabad heat wave. PLoS One 9, e91831.
Barnston, A.G., Glantz, M.H., He, Y., 1999. Predictive skill of statistical and dynamical
climate models in SST forecasts during the 1997–98 El Niño episode and the 1998 La
Niña onset. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 80, 217–244.

10
N. Khan et al.
Beecham, S., Rashid, M., Chowdhury, R.K., 2014. Statistical downscaling of multi-site
daily rainfall in a South Australian catchment using a Generalized Linear Model. Int.
J. Climatol. 34, 3654–3670.
Béranger, K., Barnier, B., Gulev, S., Crépon, M., 2006. Comparing 20 years of precipita-
tion estimates from different sources over the world ocean. Ocean Dyn. 56, 104–138.
Breiman, L., 2001. Random forests. Mach. Learn. 45, 5–32.
Brennan, A., Cross, P.C., Creel, S., 2015. Managing more than the mean: using quantile
regression to identify factors related to large elk groups. J. Appl. Ecol. 52,
1656–1664.
Chamaillé-Jammes, S., Fritz, H., Murindagomo, F., 2007. Detecting climate changes of
concern in highly variable environments: quantile regressions reveal that droughts
worsen in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. J. Arid Environ. 71, 321–326.
Cheema, A.R., 2015. Pakistan: High-rise buildings worsened heatwave. Nature 524, 35.
De Bono, A., Peduzzi, P., Kluser, S., Giuliani, G., 2004. Impacts of Summer 2003 Heat
Wave in Europe.
Dodla, V.B., Satyanarayana, G.C., Desamsetti, S., 2017. Analysis and prediction of a
catastrophic Indian coastal heat wave of 2015. Nat. Hazards 87, 395–414.
Dole, R., et al., 2011. Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010 Russian heat wave?
Geophys. Res. Lett. 38.
Escape, U., 2015. Disasters in Asia and the Pacific: 2015 Year in Review United Nations
Report Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific Google Scholar.
Fawcett, R., Jones, D., Beard, G., 2005. A Verification of Publicly Issued Seasonal
Forecasts Issued by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology Australian Meteorological
Magazine 54.
Folland, C., Owen, J., Ward, M.N., Colman, A., 1991. Prediction of seasonal rainfall in the
Sahel region using empirical and dynamical methods. J. Forecast. 10, 21–56.
Gao, Z., Hu, Z.-Z., Jha, B., Yang, S., Zhu, J., Shen, B., Zhang, R., 2014. Variability and
predictability of Northeast China climate during 1948–2012. Clim. Dyn. 43, 787–804.
Gao, M., Wang, B., Yang, J., Dong, W., 2018. Are peak summer sultry heat wave days over
the Yangtze–Huaihe River basin predictable? J. Clim. 31, 2185–2196.
Gleisner, H., Thejll, P., Stendel, M., Kaas, E., Machenhauer, B., 2005. Solar signals in
tropospheric re-analysis data: comparing NCEP/NCAR and ERA40. J. Atmos. Sol.
Terr. Phys. 67, 785–791.
Graham, R., et al., 2005. A performance comparison of coupled and uncoupled versions of
the Met Office seasonal prediction general circulation model. Tellus A 57, 320–339.
Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R., Friedman, J., 2009. Unsupervised learning. In: The Elements of
Statistical Learning. Springer, pp. 485–585.
He, W.-p., Zhao, S.-s., 2018. Assessment of the quality of NCEP-2 and CFSR reanalysis
daily temperature in China based on long-range correlation. Clim. Dyn. 50, 493–505.
Hjort, J., Suomi, J., Käyhkö, J., 2011. Spatial prediction of urban–rural temperatures
using statistical methods. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 106, 139–152.
Im, E.-S., Pal, J.S., Eltahir, E.A., 2017. Deadly heat waves projected in the densely po-
pulated agricultural regions of South Asia. Sci. Adv. 3, e1603322.
Jiang, Z., Ma, T., Wu, Z., 2012. China coldwave duration in a warming winter: change of
the leading mode. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 110, 65–75.
Kalnay, E., et al., 1996. The NCEP/NCAR 40-year reanalysis project. Bull. Am. Meteorol.
Soc 77, 437–472.
Kannan, S., Ghosh, S., 2011. Prediction of daily rainfall state in a river basin using sta-
tistical downscaling from GCM output. Stoch. Env. Res. Risk A. 25, 457–474.
Khan, N., Shahid, S., Ahmed, K., Ismail, T., Nawaz, N., Son, M., 2018a. Performance
assessment of general circulation model in simulating daily precipitation and tem-
perature using multiple gridded datasets. Water 10, 1793.
Khan, N., Shahid, S., bin Ismail, T., Wang, X.-J., 2018b. Spatial distribution of unidirec-
tional trends in temperature and temperature extremes in Pakistan. Theor. Appl.
Climatol. 1–15.
Khan, N., Shahid, S., Ismail, T., Ahmed, K., Nawaz, N., 2018c. Trends in heat wave related
indices in Pakistan. Stoch. Env. Res. Risk A. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-018-
1605-2.
Landsea, C.W., Knaff, J.A., 2000. How much skill was there in forecasting the very strong
1997–98 El Niño? Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 81, 2107–2120.
Lim, E.-P., Hendon, H.H., Anderson, D.L., Charles, A., Alves, O., 2011. Dynamical, sta-
tistical–dynamical, and multimodel ensemble forecasts of Australian spring season
rainfall. Mon. Weather Rev. 139, 958–975.
Liu, X., Yuan, S., Li, L., 2012a. Prediction of temperature time series based on wavelet
transform and support vector machine. JCP 7, 1911–1918.
Liu, Z., Xu, Z., Yao, Z., Huang, H., 2012b. Comparison of surface variables from ERA and
NCEP reanalysis with station data over eastern China. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 107,
611–621.
Lowe, R., García-Díez, M., Ballester, J., Creswick, J., Robine, J.-M., Herrmann, F.R., Rodó,
X., 2016. Evaluation of an early-warning system for heat wave-related mortality in
Europe: implications for sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasting and climate services.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 13, 206.
Maini, P., Kumar, A., Rathore, L., Singh, S., 2003. Forecasting maximum and minimum
temperatures by statistical interpretation of numerical weather prediction model
output. Weather Forecast. 18, 938–952.
Meinshausen, N., 2006. Quantile regression forests. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 7, 983–999.
11
Atmospheric Research 221 (2019) 1–11
Mooney, P.A., Mulligan, F.J., Fealy, R., 2011. Comparison of ERA-40, ERA-Interim and
NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data with observed surface air temperatures over Ireland. Int.
J. Climatol. 31, 545–557.
Mora, C., et al., 2017. Global risk of deadly heat. Nat. Clim. Chang. 7, 501.
Moradkhani, H., Meier, M., 2010. Long-lead water supply forecast using large-scale cli-
mate predictors and independent component analysis. J. Hydrol. Eng. 15, 744–762.
Naing, W.Y.N., Htike, Z.Z., 2015. Forecasting of monthly temperature variations using
random forests APRN. J. Eng. Appl. Sci. 10, 10109–10112.
Najafi, M.R., Moradkhani, H., Wherry, S.A., 2010. Statistical downscaling of precipitation
using machine learning with optimal predictor selection. J. Hydrol. Eng. 16,
650–664.
Perkins, S., Alexander, L., 2013. On the measurement of heat waves. J. Clim. 26,
4500–4517.
Perkins-Kirkpatrick, S., Gibson, P., 2017. Changes in regional heatwave characteristics as
a function of increasing global temperature. Sci. Rep. 7, 12256.
Pezza, A.B., Van Rensch, P., Cai, W., 2012. Severe heat waves in Southern Australia:
synoptic climatology and large scale connections. Clim. Dyn. 38, 209–224.
Pour, S.H., Harun, S.B., Shahid, S., 2014. Genetic programming for the downscaling of
extreme rainfall events on the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Atmosphere 5,
914–936.
Pour, S.H., Shahid, S., Chung, E.-S., Wang, X.-J., 2018. Model Output Statistics
Downscaling Using Support Vector Machine for the Projection of Spatial and
Temporal Changes in Rainfall of Bangladesh Atmospheric Research.
Rajeevan, M., Pai, D., Kumar, R.A., Lal, B., 2007. New statistical models for long-range
forecasting of southwest monsoon rainfall over India. Clim. Dyn. 28, 813–828.
Repelli, C.A., Nobre, P., 2004. Statistical prediction of sea-surface temperature over the
tropical Atlantic. Int. J. Climatol. 24, 45–55.
Robinson, P.J., 2001. On the definition of a heat wave. J. Appl. Meteorol. 40, 762–775.
Russo, S., et al., 2014. Magnitude of extreme heat waves in present climate and their
projection in a warming world. J. Geophys. Res. 119.
Sachindra, D., Perera, B., 2018. Annual statistical downscaling of precipitation and eva-
poration and monthly disaggregation. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 131, 181–200.
Sachindra, D., Huang, F., Barton, A., Perera, B., 2013. Least square support vector and
multi-linear regression for statistically downscaling general circulation model outputs
to catchment streamflows. Int. J. Climatol. 33, 1087–1106.
Sachindra, D., Ahmed, K., Shahid, S., Perera, B., 2018. Cautionary note on the use of
genetic programming in statistical downscaling. Int. J. Climatol. 38, 3449–3465.
Saeed, F., Almazroui, M., Islam, N., Khan, M.S., 2017. Intensification of future heat waves
in Pakistan: a study using CORDEX regional climate models ensemble. Nat. Hazards
87, 1635–1647.
Sajjad, S.H., Batool, R., Qadri, S.T., Shirazi, S.A., Shakrullah, K., 2015. The long-term
variability in minimum and maximum temperature trends and heat island of Lahore
city. Pakistan Sci. Int. 27, 1321–1325.
Sanderson, M.G., Economou, T., Salmon, K.H., Jones, S.E., 2017. Historical trends and
variability in heat waves in the United Kingdom. Atmosphere 8, 191.
Shabbar, A., Barnston, A.G., 1996. Skill of seasonal climate forecasts in Canada using
canonical correlation analysis. Mon. Weather Rev. 124, 2370–2385.
Sheffield, J., Goteti, G., Wood, E.F., 2006. Development of a 50-year high-resolution
global dataset of meteorological forcings for land surface modeling. J. Clim. 19,
3088–3111.
Sheffield, J., Wood, E.F., Roderick, M.L., 2012. Little change in global drought over the
past 60 years. Nature 491, 435.
Sherwood, S.C., Huber, M., 2010. An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat
stress. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 107, 9552–9555.
Siddaway, J., Petelina, S., 2011. Transport and evolution of the 2009 Australian Black
Saturday bushfire smoke in the lower stratosphere observed by OSIRIS on Odin. J.
Geophys. Res. 116.
Solomon, S., et al., 2007. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, pp. 2007.
Taghavi, F., 2010. Linkage between climate change and extreme events in Iran. J. Earth
Space Phys. 36, 33–43.
Weerts, A., Winsemius, H., Verkade, J., 2011. Estimation of predictive hydrological un-
certainty using quantile regression: examples from the National Flood Forecasting
System (England and Wales). Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 15, 255–265.
Wu, Z., Jiang, Z., Li, J., Zhong, S., Wang, L., 2012. Possible association of the western
Tibetan Plateau snow cover with the decadal to interdecadal variations of northern
China heatwave frequency. Clim. Dyn. 39, 2393–2402.
You, Q., Jiang, Z., Kong, L., Wu, Z., Bao, Y., Kang, S., Pepin, N., 2017. A comparison of
heat wave climatologies and trends in China based on multiple definitions. Clim. Dyn.
48, 3975–3989.
Zhu, Z., Li, T., 2018. Extended-range forecasting of Chinese summer surface air tem-
perature and heat waves. Clim. Dyn. 50, 2007–2021.
Zhu, L., Jin, J., Liu, X., Tian, L., Zhang, Q., 2017. Simulations of the impact of lakes on
local and regional climate over the Tibetan Plateau. Atmosphere-Ocean 1–10.