Open Journal of Geology, 2018, 8, 987-1001
http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojg
ISSN Online: 2161-7589
ISSN Print: 2161-7570
DOI: 10.4236/ojg.2018.810059 Sep. 26, 2018 987 Open Journal of Geology
Accurate Imputation for Relative Humidity
over Pakistan Gathered from AQUA Satellite
Usman Saleem
1
, Mian Sohail Akram
1
, Muhammad Fahad Ullah
2
, Faisal Rehman
2*
1
Institute of Geology, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan
2
Departments of Earth Sciences, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan
Abstract
The relative humidity in the atmosphere captured by AQUA satellite contains
missing matrices. In order to fill such missing values four very popular im-
putation techniques: Bilinear, Inverse Distance Weighting, Natural Neighbor
and Nearest Interpolations were tested. Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root
Mean Square Error (RMSE), Coefficient of Determination (R
2
) and Correla-
tion Coefficient (Corr), were used to check the accuracy of these interpola-
tions. It was found that the Inverse Distance Weighting and Nearest Interpo-
lation were proved not to be suited. Natural interpolation gave accurate re-
sults than the aforementioned two interpolations. Missing values of relative
humidity were accurately refilled with Bilinear Interpolation. This interpola-
tion produced RMSE of ±0.543 for relative humidity over 100, 150, 200, 250,
300, 400, 500 hPa while for 600, 700, 850 and 925 hPa RMSE remainnear to 1.
A perfect fit to the surface and very strong correlation (value near to 0.99)
was found between actual and imputed relative humidity data through Bili-
near Interpolation. Therefore it was concluded that the Bilinear Interpolation
is the most accurate and best imputation for missing values of relative hu-
midity form 100 to 1000 hPa levels.
Keywords
Imputation, Humidity, Aqua Satellite , Pakistan
1. Introduction
Metrological data collected from satellites mostly contain gaps. Such gaps in data
set occur due to less efficient sampling of satellite subsystem [1] [2]. Using
missing data may produce misleading in purposed outcome of the research [3].
For the best use of relative humidity data, it is necessary to have best estimate of
the gaps in satellite captured data with imputation techniques [1] [4] [5] [6]. Sa-
How to cite this paper: Saleem, U.,
Akram, M.S., Ullah, M.F. and Rehman, F.
(2018) Accurate Imputation for Relative
Humidity over Pakistan Gathered from
AQUA Satellite. Open Journal of Geology,
8, 987-1001.
https://doi.org/10.4236/ojg.2018.810059
Received: August 16, 2018
Accepted: September 23, 2018
Published: September 26, 2018
Copyright © 2018 by authors and
Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution International
License (CC BY 4.0).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Open Access