To facilitate effective decision-making, gridded satellite precipitation products should include uncertainty estimates. Machine learning has been proposed for issuing such estimates. However, most existing algorithms for this purpose rely on quantile regression. Distributional regression offers distinct advantages over quantile regression, including the ability to model intermittency as well as a stronger ability to extrapolate beyond the training data, which is critical for predicting extreme precipitation. In this work, we introduce the concept of distributional regression for the engineering task of creating precipitation datasets through data merging. Building upon this concept, we propose new ensemble learning methods that can be valuable not only for spatial prediction but also for prediction problems in general. These methods exploit conditional zero-adjusted probability distributions estimated with generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape (GAMLSS), spline-based GAMLSS and distributional regression forests as well as their ensembles (stacking based on quantile regression, and equal-weight averaging). To identify the most effective methods for our specific problem, we compared them to benchmarks using a large, multi-source precipitation dataset. Stacking emerged as the most successful strategy. Three specific stacking methods achieved the best performance based on the quantile scoring rule, although the ranking of these methods varied across quantile levels. This suggests that a task-specific combination of multiple algorithms could yield significant benefits.

通过分布回归和集成学习方法，可以在空间预测和其他预测问题中利用零调整概率分布来创建由数据合并生成的降水数据集，并提供不确定性估计。通过与基准模型的比较，确定了层叠方法是最有效的策略，而在特定的分位数水平下，具体的层叠方法会有所不同，因此使用多个算法进行任务特定的组合可能会带来显著的好处。

融合分布回归算法的卫星降水空间预测中的不确定性估计