VISUALISATION TECHNIQUES TO DETECT ABNORMAL SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE DATA IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

Authors

  • SHARIFAH SAKINAH SYED ABD MUTALIB Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia
  • NORIZAN MOHAMED Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia
  • MAHARANI ABU BAKAR Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia
  • WAN NURAINI FAHANA WAN NASIR Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46754/jmsi.2026.06.001

Keywords:

Sea surface temperature, climatic factors, abnormal data, Chernoff faces, distance-distance plot

Abstract

Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is the temperature of the water near an ocean’s surface. It plays a critical role in the interaction between the Earth’s surface and its atmosphere. The factors affecting sea surface temperature are crucial to understanding climate change, while SST itself is influenced by climatic factors such as humidity, air temperature, wind speed, and radiation. In practice, multivariate, anomalous abnormal data cannot be avoided. SST data is no exception to these data inconsistencies and may have multivariate or abnormal data. Therefore, a technique which visualises the abnormal data is crucial. In this study, Chernoff faces, and distance-distance plots are used as visualisation techniques to detect abnormal sea surface temperature data. Chernoff faces is a graphical representation of multivariate data, while a distance-distance plot is a graphical representation to reveal abnormal data. Based on both analyses, the abnormal data are clearly visible of climate factors of SST. Additionally, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) with an autoencoder was used to detect outliers by applying a threshold to reconstruction errors. The Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model with the autoencoder and Chernoff faces method are effective techniques for detecting outliers in SST datasets.

References

Abraham, A. (2005). Artificial neural networks. In Sydenham, P., & Thorn, R. (Eds.), Handbook of measuring system design. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/0471497398.mm421

Chan, D. (2021). Combining statistical, physical, and historical evidence to improve historical sea-surface temperature records. Harvard Data Science Review, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.edcee38f

Cheng, H., Sun, L., & Li, J. (2021). Neural network approach to retrieving ocean subsurface temperatures from surface parameters observed by satellites. Water, 13(3), Article 388. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13030388

Chernoff, H. (1973). The use of faces to represent points in k-dimensional space graphically. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 68(342), 361–368. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1973.10482434

Gerhardt, E. (2019). Visualization of multi key performance indicators by dynamic Chernoff faces. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2413, 1–10.

Hadi, A. S., Rahmatullah Imon, A. H. M. M., & Werner, M. (2009). Detection of outliers. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Computational Statistics, 1, 57–70. https://doi.org/10.1002/wics.6

IPCC. (2007). Climate change 2007: The physical science basis. IPCC.

Johnson, R. A., & Wichern, D. W. (2002). Applied multivariate statistical analysis (5th ed.). Prentice Hall.

Lee, M. D., Butavicius, M. A., & Reilly, R. E. (2003). Visualizations of binary data: A comparative evaluation. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59(5), 569–602. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1071-5819(03)00082-X

Miftahuddin, M., Mohamed, N., Abu Bakar, M., Shima, N., Syamsuddin, F., & Setiawan, I. (2021). Prediction of rainfall using ARIMA mixed models.

Miftahuddin, M., Sitanggang, A., Mohamed, N., & Abu Bakar, M. (2022). Modelling Indian Ocean air temperature using additive model. Journal of Mathematics and Sciences with Informatics, 2, 23–36. https://doi.org/10.46754/jmsi.2022.06.003

Morris, C., & Ebert, D. (2000). An experimental analysis of the effectiveness of features in Chernoff faces. In Proceedings of SPIE. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.384865

Patil, K., Deo, M. C., & Ravichandran, M. (2016). Prediction of sea surface temperature by combining numerical and neural techniques. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 33(8). https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-15-0213.1

Raciborski, R. (2009). Graphical representation of multivariate data using Chernoff faces. Stata Journal, 9(3), 374–387. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867X0900900302

Saji, N., Goswami, B., Vinayachandran, P., & Yamagata, T. (1999). A dipole mode in the tropical Indian Ocean. Nature, 401, 360–363. https://doi.org/10.1038/43854

Schott, F. A., Xie, S.-P., & McCreary, J. P., Jr. (2009). Indian Ocean circulation and climate variability. Reviews of Geophysics, 47(1). https://doi.org/10.1029/2007RG000245

Sharma, A., & Dey, S. (2012). A document-level sentiment analysis approach using artificial neural network and sentiment lexicons. ACM SIGAPP Applied Computing Review, 12(4), 67–75. https://doi.org/10.1145/2432546.2432552

Song, R., Zhao, Z., & Wang, X. (2010). An application of the V-system to the clustering of Chernoff faces. Computers & Graphics, 34(5), 529–536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2010.06.003

Wyatt, R. (2008). Face charts: A better method for visualizing complicated data. In Proceedings of MCCSIS 2008 — IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems: Computer Graphics and Visualization; Gaming; Designing for Engaging Experience and Social Interaction (pp. 51–58). IADIS.

Yu, X., Shi, S., Xu, L., Liu, Y., Miao, Q., & Sun, M. (2020). A novel method for sea surface temperature prediction based on deep learning. Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2020, Article 6387173. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/6387173

Published

24-06-2026