A Transformer-Based Regression Scheme for Forecasting Significant Wave Heights in Oceans

In this article, we present a novel approach for forecasting significant wave heights in oceanic waters. We propose an algorithm based on the WaveWatch III, differencing, and a transformer neural network (Transformer). The data becomes stationary after first-order differencing, performed with the observed significant wave height and the wave height forecasts obtained from WaveWatch III. We perform a case study on a group of 92 buoys using WaveWatch III hindcasts. The Transformer model then provides the statistical forecasts of the residuals. The Transformer-based proposed framework obtains the root mean square error of 0.231 m for two days ahead forecasting. Our proposed method outperforms existing state-of-the-art machine learning and numerical approaches for significant wave heights prediction. Our results suggest that combining numerical and machine learning approaches gives better performance than using either alone.