Synthetic Aperture Radar as a Tool for Tornado Classification in Forested Areas
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Canada’s tornado climatology has historically been challenging to accurately assess. Many Canadian tornadoes are currently rated on the Enhanced Fujita scale using treefall as a damage indicator, though this approach may occasionally underestimate tornado intensity. In this work, we propose that the use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of tornado tracks may lead to more accurate tornado ratings in tornadoes that have at least 25% of their track consisting of forested areas. We create a replicable methodology by which SAR data can be used to classify tornadoes by generating difference images using Sentinel-1 C-Band radar data acquired before and after the tornado event. We apply this methodology to a large number of recent Canadian tornadoes. The results showed that only higher intensity tornadoes (EF3+) were detectable in the SAR change detection images. Critically, the results revealed possible misclassifications, where tornadoes originally assigned a rating of EF2 based on treefall damage indicators were visible in the SAR imagery. Our study provides a foundation for future work, providing an improved methodology for classifying tornadoes in remote forested areas.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".