Predicting High-Resolution Gridded Sea Ice Concentration by Integrating LightGBM and Kriging Algorithms

Journal article, 2026

High-resolution spatiotemporal sea ice concentration (SIC) estimates are essential for Arctic navigation and ice analysis, but existing observational products are often too coarse, and physics-based models are computationally expensive. This study proposes a data-driven framework that couples Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) temporal prediction with Kriging-based spatial interpolation to reconstruct SIC fields over the Northern Sea Route sector. LightGBM is trained on a grid-based SIC time series with engineered features representing persistence, seasonality, and short-term variability, enabling multi-horizon forecasting across large spatial grids. The predicted SIC fields are then refined using Ordinary Kriging (OK) and Co-Kriging (CK) with Gaussian and spherical semi-variogram models. Prediction performance is evaluated using root mean square error, and interpolation accuracy is assessed through cross-validation. Results show that, for high-latitude regions and resolutions finer than 0.25° × 0.25°, OK with a spherical semi-variogram achieves lower interpolation errors than CK and Gaussian-based alternatives. By sequentially coupling temporal learning and spatial refinement, the proposed framework improves temporal continuity, spatial structure, and error quantification, providing high-resolution SIC information suitable for large-scale Arctic ice analysis and navigation support.