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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-590</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Deep learning for non-precipitation radar echo identification: Comparative evaluation of polarimetric, spatial, and temporal information</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yang</surname>
<given-names>Rongze</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5620-3698</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wei</surname>
<given-names>Chaoshi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Pan</surname>
<given-names>Xiang</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3890-6599</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhao</surname>
<given-names>Kun</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ming</surname>
<given-names>Jie</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3382-763X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lu</surname>
<given-names>Chen</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Tan</surname>
<given-names>Haotian</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4358-5443</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhao</surname>
<given-names>Wenxuan</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Huang</surname>
<given-names>Hao</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3998-9074</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather Meteorological Science and Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023,  China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Key Laboratory of Mesoscale Severe Weather of MOE, Frontiers Science Center for Critical Earth Material Cycling, and  School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Key Laboratory of Radar Meteorology, China Meteorology Administration, Beijing, 100081, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Meteorological Center of East China Air Traffic Management Bureau, Shanghai, 200335, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>Qinghai Provincial Key Laboratory of Plateau Climate Change and Corresponding Ecological and Environmental Effects,  and School of Ecology and Environmental Science, Qinghai Institute of Technology, Xining, 810000, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>10</day>
<month>06</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>24</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Rongze Yang et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-590/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-590/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-590/egusphere-2026-590.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-590/egusphere-2026-590.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Accurate identification of non-precipitation echoes (NPEs) in weather radar observations requires effective use of polarimetric signatures together with spatiotemporal structure. Here we present a unified deep-learning framework to quantify the independent and synergistic contributions of model architecture, dual-polarization variables, and short-term temporal evolution to NPE identification. Using data from the Guangzhou S-band dual-polarization radar, we conduct controlled comparative experiments with two representative architectures: a pointwise multilayer perceptron (MLP) and a Transformer-based Swin U-Net that explicitly learns spatial context. We further perform ablation experiments across single- versus dual-polarization inputs and single-volume versus two-volume inputs. Results show that architecture-driven spatial-context learning is the dominant factor: Swin U-Net consistently outperforms the pointwise MLP under all input settings. On a high-confidence test subset, for example, the Critical Success Index (CSI) increases from 0.887 for the dual-polarization MLP to 0.950 for the dual-polarization Swin U-Net. Dual-polarization variables provide essential microphysical constraints and substantially improve class separability, particularly for pointwise classifiers. Incorporating two consecutive volumes further improves performance by capturing short-term echo evolution, with larger gains for the MLP than for Swin U-Net. The best-performing configuration, combining Swin U-Net with dual-polarization and two-volume inputs, achieves a CSI of 0.953 on the high-confidence test subset. Notably, the Swin U-Net using only the reflectivity factor (&lt;em&gt;Z&lt;sub&gt;H&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt;) as input retains strong skill (CSI = 0.927), indicating that spatial-context learning can partially compensate for missing polarimetry and thus providing a practical pathway for quality control of legacy single-polarization archives.</p>
</abstract>
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<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42422501</award-id>
<award-id>42475006</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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