% Generated by roxygen2: do not edit by hand
% Please edit documentation in R/CST_CategoricalEnsCombination.R
\name{CST_CategoricalEnsCombination}
\alias{CST_CategoricalEnsCombination}
\title{Make categorical forecast based on a multi-model forecast with potential for 
calibrate}
\usage{
CST_CategoricalEnsCombination(
  exp,
  obs,
  cat.method = "pool",
  eval.method = "leave-one-out",
  amt.cat = 3,
  k = 1,
  tail.out = TRUE,
  ...
)
}
\arguments{
\item{exp}{An object of class \code{s2dv_cube} as returned by \code{CST_Load} 
function, containing the seasonal forecast experiment data in the element 
named \code{$data}. The amount of forecasting models is equal to the size of 
the \code{dataset} dimension of the data array. The amount of members per 
model may be different. The  size of the \code{member} dimension of the data
array is equal to the maximum of the ensemble members among the models. 
Models with smaller ensemble sizes have residual indices of \code{member} 
dimension in the data array filled with NA values.}

\item{obs}{An object of class \code{s2dv_cube} as returned by \code{CST_Load} 
function, containing the observed data in the element named \code{$data}.}

\item{cat.method}{Method used to produce the categorical forecast, can be 
either \code{pool}, \code{comb}, \code{mmw} or \code{obs}. The method pool 
assumes equal weight for all ensemble members while the method comb assumes 
equal weight for each model. The weighting method is descirbed in 
Rajagopalan et al. (2002), Robertson et al. (2004) and Van Schaeybroeck and 
Vannitsem (2019). Finally, the \code{obs} method classifies the observations 
into the different categories and therefore contains only 0 and 1 values.}

\item{eval.method}{Is the sampling method used, can be either 
\code{"in-sample"} or \code{"leave-one-out"}. Default value is the 
\code{"leave-one-out"} cross validation.}

\item{amt.cat}{Is the amount of categories. Equally-sized quantiles will be 
calculated based on the amount of categories.}

\item{...}{other parameters to be passed on to the calibration procedure.}
}
\value{
An object of class \code{s2dv_cube} containing the categorical 
forecasts in the element called \code{$data}. The first two dimensions of the 
returned object are named dataset and member and are both of size one. An 
additional dimension named category is introduced and is of size amt.cat.
}
\description{
This function converts a multi-model ensemble forecast into a 
categorical forecast by giving the probability for each category. Different 
methods are available to combine the different ensemble forecasting models 
into probabilistic categorical forecasts. 

Motivation: Beyond the short range, the unpredictable component of weather 
predictions becomes substantial due to the chaotic nature of the earth system. 
Therefore, predictions can mostly be skillful when used in a probabilistic 
sense. In practice this is done using ensemble forecasts. It is then common to
convert the ensemble forecasts to occurence probabilities for different 
categories. These categories typically are taken as terciles from 
climatolgical distributions. For instance for temperature, there is a cold, 
normal and warm class. Commonly multiple ensemble forecasting systems are 
available but some models may be more competitive than others for the 
variable, region and user need under consideration. Therefore, when 
calculating the category probabilities, the ensemble members of the different 
forecasting system may be differently weighted. Such weighting is typically 
done by comparison of the ensemble forecasts with observations. 

Description of the tool: The tool considers all forecasts (all members from 
all forecasting systems) and converts them into occurrence probabilities of 
different categories. The amount of categories can be changed and are taken as 
the climatological quantiles (e.g. terciles), extracted from the observational 
data. The methods that are available to combine the ensemble forecasting 
models into probabilistic categorical forecasts are: 1) ensemble pooling where 
all ensemble members of all ensemble systems are weighted equally, 
2) model combination where each model system is weighted equally, and,
3) model weighting. 
The model weighting method is described in Rajagopalan et al. (2002),
Robertson et al. 2004 and Van Schaeybroeck and Vannitsem (2019). More 
specifically, this method uses different weights for the occurence probability 
predicted by the available models and by a climatological model and optimizes 
the weights by minimizing the ignorance score. Finally, the function can also 
be used to categorize the observations in the categorical quantiles.
}
\examples{
mod1 <- 1 : (2 * 2* 4 * 5 * 2 * 2)
dim(mod1) <- c(dataset = 2, member = 2, sdate = 4, ftime = 5, lat = 2, lon = 2)
mod1[2, 1, , , , ] <- NA
datasets <- c("MF", "UKMO")
obs1 <- 1 : (1 * 1 * 4 * 5 * 2 * 2)
dim(obs1) <- c(dataset = 1, member = 1, sdate = 4, ftime = 5, lat = 2, lon = 2)
lon <- seq(0, 30, 5)
lat <- seq(0, 25, 5)
coords <- list(lat = lat, lon = lon)
attrs <- list(Datasets = datasets)
exp <- list(data = mod1, coords = coords, attrs = attrs)
obs <- list(data = obs1, coords = coords)
attr(exp, 'class') <- 's2dv_cube'
attr(obs, 'class') <- 's2dv_cube'
a <- CST_CategoricalEnsCombination(exp = exp, obs = obs, amt.cat = 3, 
                                  cat.method = "mmw") 
}
\references{
Rajagopalan, B., Lall, U., & Zebiak, S. E. (2002). Categorical 
climate forecasts through regularization and optimal combination of multiple 
GCM ensembles. Monthly Weather Review, 130(7), 1792-1811.

Robertson, A. W., Lall, U., Zebiak, S. E., & Goddard, L. (2004). 
Improved combination of multiple atmospheric GCM ensembles for seasonal 
prediction. Monthly Weather Review, 132(12), 2732-2744.

Van Schaeybroeck, B., & Vannitsem, S. (2019). Postprocessing of 
Long-Range Forecasts. In Statistical Postprocessing of Ensemble Forecasts (pp. 267-290).
}
\author{
Bert Van Schaeybroeck, \email{bertvs@meteo.be}
}
