S-SOM v1.0: A structural self-organizing map algorithm for weather typing

A novel feature of the S-SOM compared with traditional SOMs is its ability to deal with input data with spatial or temporal structures. In detail, the search scheme for the best matching unit (BMU) in a S-SOM is built based on a structural similarity (S-SIM) index rather than by using the traditional Euclidean distance (ED).

S-SIM enables the BMU search to consider the correlation in space between weather states, such as the locations of highs or lows, that is impossible when using ED. The S-SOM performance is evaluated by multiple demo simulations of clustering weather patterns over Japan using the ERA-Interim sea-level pressure data. The results show the S-SOM's superiority compared with a standard SOM with ED (or ED-SOM) in two respects: clustering quality based on silhouette analysis and topological preservation based on topological error.