MSF-PhyDRNN: A Physics-Driven Multi-Source Fusion Recurrent Neural Network for Short-Term Thunderstorm Gale Nowcasting

Accurate nowcasting of thunderstorm gales, a highly destructive form of severe convective weather, is critical for mitigating wind-related disasters and ensuring the safety of life and property. Existing deep learning approaches face challenges such as performance decay at high wind speed thresholds, limited capability in capturing extreme events, and difficulties in processing high-resolution data. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel physics-driven multi-source fusion recurrent neural network named MSF-PhyDRNN. The model incorporates a multi-source fusion module that integrates radar composite reflectivity and surface wind field data through feature decoupling and hierarchical fusion. Additionally, we improved the recurrent unit in PhyDNet to enhance short-term wind capture and reduce redundancy, leveraging its cascaded memory and spatiotemporal propagation mechanisms. Experimental results indicate that, compared to the advanced MFWPN model, MSF-PhyDRNN achieves an average increase of 14.3% in the Critical Success Index (CSI), 27.2% in the Probability of Detection (POD), and 19.7% in the Heidke Skill Score (HSS) across the Jiangsu and South China datasets.