Dilruba Sharmin et al.

/ (IJAEST) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ENGINEERING SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGIES

Vol No. 2, Issue No. 1, 099 - 103

A study on the parameters of backpropagation

artificial neural network temperature prediction
model
Dilruba Sharmin,Farzana Hussain,Md.Shafiqur Rahman,Susmita Ghose,T.K.Yousufzai,Mahfuja Akter
Dept. of Applied Physics Electronics & Communication Engineering
University of Dhaka
Dhaka,Bangladesh
Email:shafiqrahman50@yahoo.com

Abstract—The aim of this work is to study the modeling

process of artificial neural networks (ANN) to predict the
maximum and minimum temperature of Dhaka, the capital of
Bangladesh. A feed forward multilayer ANN namely
Temperature predicting Neural Network (TPNN) has been
developed and trained using back propagation learning
algorithm to test its prediction capability. The TPNN was
II. BASIC CONCEPTS OF NEURAL NETWORK
An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is an information
processing paradigm that is inspired by the way biological
nervous systems, such as the brain, process information. The
key element of this paradigm is the novel structure of the

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constructed, trained, and tested with the software developed in
information processing system. It is composed of a large
Visual C++. The parameters of the neural network have been number of highly interconnected processing elements
varied and the corresponding predictive results were recorded. (neurons) working in unison to solve specific problems.
The parameters studied in this research were the learning rate, ANNs, like people, learn by example. An ANN is configured
momentum factor and number of neurons in the hidden layer. for a specific application, such as pattern recognition or data
The model was trained and tested using nine years (1992-2000) classification, through a learning process. Learning in
biological systems involves adjustments to the synaptic
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meteorological data. Inputs of the neural network were daily
maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average
temperature, rainfall, humidity, sunshine hours and wind
speed of the previous day, and the output was the maximum or
minimum temperature of the day. The data for the years
connections that exist between the neurons. This is true of
ANNs as well.

1992-1999 were used in training phase while that for the year
2000 were used to test the model. The accuracy of the model
was calculated and the mean relative percentage error for the
TPNN model was 7.45826% for maximum temperature and
8.655804% for minimum temperature prediction. The result
shows that the proposed TPNN introduced a good accurate
prediction for the daily maximum and minimum temperature.
A
I. INTRODUCTION
Weather prediction is a complex process and a
challenging task for researchers. It includes expertise in
multiple disciplines [1], [2]. The prediction of atmospheric Fig-1: Neural Network
parameters is essential for various applications. Some of  It consists of Input layer, Hidden Layer(s) and
them include climate monitoring, drought detection, severe
output layer.
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weather prediction, agriculture and production, planning in

energy industry, aviation industry, communication, pollution  Can be trained with input-output data pattern.
dispersal etc. Accurate prediction of weather parameters is a  Can be tested for new input data
difficult task due to the dynamic nature of atmosphere.
Various techniques like linear regression, auto regression, A. Model of an artificial neuron
Multi Layer Perception, Radial Basis Function networks are The Model of a simple artificial neuron is shown in
applied to predict atmospheric parameters like temperature, figure: 2.It receives n inputs x1, x2… xn with weights w1,
wind speed, rainfall, meteorological pollution etc. [3], [4], w2… wn attached to the input links. The weighted sum of
[5], [6], [7], [8]. It was found that the non linear operator inputs I=∑wi.xi is computed to be passed on to a nonlinear
equations governing the atmospheric system are the ones filter Ф, called activation function to release the output Ф (I).
who can better understand the dynamics of atmosphere. In Here Ф could be a step function, signum function, sigmoidal
the recent past many forecast methods have been developed function, or hyperbolic tangent function.
using Artificial Neural Networks.
Our study was based on Multi Layer Perception (MLP)
which trained and tested using past nine years (1992-2000)
meteorological data. The objective of this study is to
develop ANN-based model by using meteorological data of
Dhaka city located in Center of Bangladesh for one year
ahead forecasting of temperature of this area.

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 Dilruba Sharmin et al. / (IJAEST) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ENGINEERING SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGIES
Vol No. 2, Issue No. 1, 099 - 103

III. DATA COLLECTION & PROCESSING

 Meteorological data of Dhaka station were
collected for a period of nine years(1992-2000)
 Data of 1992-1999 were used to train
 All data of the year 2000 were used to test
 Normalized data were used
(Data) normalized = [(Data) actual – (Data) min)] / [(Data)
max–(Data) min]

Fig 2: Simple model of an artificial neuron IV. SYSTEM MODEL

B. Application of ANN
 Non-linear system modeling.
 Forecasting and risk assessment.
 Pattern recognition (PR)/image processing.
 Neural networks in medicine.
 Neural networks in business & marketing.
The network receives the value of maximum temperature,
minimum temperature, average temperature, bright sunshine
hour, humidity, rainfall, wind speed of 1992 to 1999 as
input, and predicts the value of maximum and minimum
temperature of 2000 as output. The training process of the
NNs used a set of input-output data pairs.
In this work Maximum &minimum temperature of a day is
predicted based on the maximum and minimum temperature

C. Backpropagation learning
Consider the network as shown in figure: 3 where the
subscripts I, H and O denote input, hidden and output
neurons.
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A
Fig 3: Multilayer feedforward backpropagation network [9].
D. Training of an ANN involves two passes
 Forward pass: input signal propagate from the
network input to the output.
 Reverse pass: calculated error signals propagate
backwards through the network to adjust the
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of previous n days. The available data is divided into
training, and test sets. Training set is used to train the model,
and test set is used to evaluate the output
A. TPNN modelling
 Input layer: consists of seven nodes that are
maximum temperature, minimum temperature,
average temperature, bright sunshine hour, humidity,
rainfall, wind speed. The input signals to the input
layer are directly passed to the next layer (hidden
layer) without any computation or modifications. It
uses linear activation function.
 Hidden layer: which receive signal from the input
layer through the weights and send their outputs to
the nodes of the output layer. The nodes of hidden
layer use the sigmoidal activation function.
 Output layer: contains only one node that receives
its input from the output of neurons in the hidden
layer through the weights. The node of output layer
also uses the sigmoidal activation function.
B. Data for Training
Max temp
45.00

weight. 40.00
35.00
30.00
E. Backpropagation algorithm 25.00 Max temp
The basic algorithm loop structure is given below: 20.00
15.00
Initialize the weights 10.00
Repeat
01-07-1992
14-06-1993
28-05-1994
11-05-1995
23-04-1996
06-04-1997
20-03-1998
03-03-1999

For each training pattern

Train on that pattern
End
Until the error is acceptably low
A computer program was developed using Visual C++ 6.0
for training the data and inferring the result using the
algorithm.

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 Dilruba Sharmin et al. / (IJAEST) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ENGINEERING SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGIES
Vol No. 2, Issue No. 1, 099 - 103

RF (mm)
MIN TFMP
160.00
35.00 140.00
30.00 120.00
25.00 100.00
80.00 RF (mm)
20.00
MnT 60.00
15.00 40.00
10.00 20.00
5.00 0.00

01-07-1992
16-01-1993
03-08-1993
18-02-1994
05-09-1994
23-03-1995
08-10-1995
24-04-1996
09-11-1996
27-05-1997
12-12-1997
29-06-1998
14-01-1999
01-08-1999
0.00
01-07-1992
21-01-1993
13-08-1993
05-03-1994
25-09-1994
17-04-1995
07-11-1995
29-05-1996
19-12-1996
11-07-1997
31-01-1998
23-08-1998
14-03-1999
05-10-1999
C. Training of TPNN
AVG TEMP
Training inputs:
35.00  Previous day’s maximum temperature.
 Minimum temperature.
30.00
25.00
20.00
AvgT  Average temperature.
15.00
10.00  Bright sunshine hour.
5.00
0.00
 Humidity.
 Rainfall.
01-07-1992
30-12-1992
30-06-1993
29-12-1993
29-06-1994
28-12-1994
28-06-1995
27-12-1995
26-06-1996
25-12-1996
25-06-1997
24-12-1997
24-06-1998
23-12-1998
23-06-1999
22-12-1999

 Wind speed.

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Training output:
 Maximum temperature of the day or
RH (% )  Minimum temperature of the day.
120.000
100.000
D. Network parameter issues
80.000 This research attempts to understand the network
60.000
40.000
20.000
0.000
ES Rh (%)
parameters by varying them and observing their effect to on
the network. The parametric effect of varying the
 No of hidden neuron(HN)
01-07-1992
13-01-1993
28-07-1993
09-02-1994
24-08-1994
08-03-1995
20-09-1995
03-04-1996
16-10-1996
30-04-1997
12-11-1997
27-05-1998
09-12-1998
23-06-1999

 Momentum factor (MF).

 Learning rate coefficient (LR).
 No of iteration.
V. VARRIATION OF PARAMETER
WSP

12.000
10.000
A. Effect of no of neuron in hidden layer
8.000
6.000 WP The Visual C++ program that was developer allows 1 to
A
4.000
21 neurons in the hidden layer. But the error in learning
process varies for different number neurons in the hidden
2.000
0.000
layer. In the experiment, it is found that error is minimum
01-07-1992
30-12-1992
30-06-1993
29-12-1993
29-06-1994
28-12-1994
28-06-1995
27-12-1995
26-06-1996
25-12-1996
25-06-1997
24-12-1997
24-06-1998
23-12-1998
23-06-1999
22-12-1999

for maximum temperature using 3 neurons and for minimum

temperature using 10 neurons in the hidden layer but the
variations are negligible if more neurons are added in the
hidden layer.
BSSH
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16.00
14.00
12.00
10.00
8.00 BSSH
6.00
4.00
2.00
0.00
01-07-1992
03-01-1993
08-07-1993
10-01-1994
15-07-1994
17-01-1995
22-07-1995
24-01-1996
28-07-1996
30-01-1997
04-08-1997
06-02-1998
11-08-1998
13-02-1999
18-08-1999

Fig: Effect of no of neuron in hidden layer (for maximum temperature)

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 Dilruba Sharmin et al. / (IJAEST) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ENGINEERING SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGIES
Vol No. 2, Issue No. 1, 099 - 103

VARIATION OF HN
Fig: Effect of adding a momentum term (for minimum temperature)
2 HN 3 HN 4 HN 7 HN 10 HN 12 HN
The effect of momentum factor during training the NN is
shown in figure From above figure it is found that the
optimum value of momentum factor is 0.5 for maximum
0.054000
0.053000
0.052000 temperature and 0.2 for minimum temperature.
0.051000
0.050000
0.049000
0.048000 D. Convergence error for NN training process
0.047000
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49

Fig: Effect of no of neurons in hidden layer (for minimum temperature)

B. Effect of learning rate coefficient ()

VARIATION OF LR

0.1 LR 0.3 LR 0.5 LR 0.7 LR 0.9 LR

0.054

0.053

0.052
Fig: Convergence error for the NN (for maximum temperature)
0.051

T
0.05

0.049
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49

Fig: Effect of learning rate coefficient (for maximum temperature)

VARIATION OF LR

0.2 LR 0.3 LR 0.4 LR 0.7 LR Series6

0.050000

0.049500
0.049000

0.048500

0.048000
ES Fig: Convergence error for the NN (for minimum temperature)

From figure, it is found that the error decreases if the

0.047500

0.047000
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 training process takes more iteration.
Fig: Effect of learning rate coefficient (for minimum temperature) E. Adjusted parameter
The figure shows the effect of learning rate coefficient Parameter Max temp Min temp
during training process of NN. It shows that the error is No of hidden layer 1 1
minimum when the learning rate coefficient for max temp is No of hidden layer 3 10
0.3 and for min temp is 0.2. neuron
A
Learning rate coefficient 0.3 0.7
Momentum factor 0.5 0.2
C. Effect of adding a momentum term No of iteration 1000 1000
The value of momentum coefficient should be positive but Sigmoid function 1 1
less than 1. Typical values lie in the range 0.5-0.9.
VARIATION OF MF
VI. TESTING TPNN
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0.2 MF 0.5 MF 0.6 MF 0.7 MF 0.9 MF 1.0 MF  After training process, TPNN with adjusted has
0.054000 been used for testing.
0.053000  After testing process, predicted output for new
0.052000 testing data sets has been provided by TPNN.
0.051000  The performances of ANN are then compared with
0.050000 actual data.
0.049000
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49

Fig: Effect of adding a momentum term (for maximum temperature)

VARIATION OF MF

0.2 MF 0.5 MF 0.9 MF 0.6 MF 0.7 MF 1.0 MF

0.052000000

0.051000000

0.050000000

0.049000000

0.048000000

0.047000000
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49

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 Dilruba Sharmin et al. / (IJAEST) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ENGINEERING SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGIES
Vol No. 2, Issue No. 1, 099 - 103

A. Performance of TPNN Engineering Applications of Artificial.

[8] Wei-Zhen Lu. Wen-Jian Wang. “Potential assessment of the support
Vector machine method in forecasting ambient air Pollutant trends”
Chemosphere, 59, pp.693-701. 2005ntelligence, 20, pp.745-755. 2007,
Algorithm and Applications, Prentice Hall, Englewood cliffs.
[9] Rajsekaran & G.A. Bijayalaksmi pai, neural networks, Fuzzy logic
and Genetic Algorithms, synthesis and Applications.

Fig: Comparison of relative percentage errors while predicting closing

maximum temperature.

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Fig: Comparison of relative percentage errors while predicting closing
minimum temperature.

VII. RESULT


The accuracy of the model was calculated.
Mean relative percentage error:
 7.45826% for maximum temperature
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prediction and
 8.65580% for minimum temperature
prediction
 Result shows that the ANN introduces a good
accurate prediction.
VIII. CONCLUSION
 Neural network could be an important tool for
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temperature prediction.
For better performance
 Long term data should be used.
 Related more input variables may be used.
 Number of hidden layer may varied.
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