Neural networks and support vector machine algorithms for automatic cloud classification of whole-sky ground-based images

Clouds are one of the most important meteorological phenomena affecting the Earth radiation balance. The increasing development of whole-sky images enables temporal and spatial high-resolution sky observations and provides the possibility to understand and quantify cloud effects more accurately. In this letter, an attempt has been made to examine the machine learning [multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural networks and support vector machine (SVM)] capabilities for automatic cloud detection in whole-sky images. The approaches have been tested on a significant number of whole-sky images (containing a variety of cloud overages in different seasons and at different daytimes) from Vigna di Valle and Tor Vergata test sites, located near Rome. The pixel values of red, green, and blue bands of the images have been used as inputs of the mentionedmodels, while the outputs provided classified pixels in terms of cloud coverage or others (cloud-free pixels and sun). For the test data set, the overall accuracies of 95.07%, with a standard deviation of 3.37, and 93.66%, with a standard deviation of 4.45, have been obtained from MLP neural networks and SVM models, respectively. Although the two approaches generally generate similar accuracies, the MLP neural networks gave a better performance in some specific cases where the SVM generates poor accuracy.