融合ARIMA与LSTM的温室气体排放预测：传统统计与深度学习的协同实践

Climate change is one of the most severe challenges facing humanity today, and accurate prediction of greenhouse gas emission trends is crucial for formulating effective environmental policies. Recently, an open-source project named "Greenhouse-Gas-Emissions-Forecasting-with-ARIMA-LSTM" emerged on GitHub, which innovatively combines the traditional statistical method ARIMA with deep learning technology LSTM to provide a new solution for greenhouse gas emission prediction. This project explores the complementary advantages of the two methods and their practical application value in climate change research and policy making.

The accurate prediction of greenhouse gas emissions is not only related to the cutting-edge progress of scientific research but also directly affects the environmental decisions of governments and the realization path of carbon neutrality goals. Traditional prediction methods often struggle to capture complex non-linear features in emission data, while single deep learning models may ignore the long-term dependency rules of time series. Therefore, how to organically combine the advantages of different methods has become an important research direction in this field. This project was born in this context; it attempts to find the optimal balance between prediction accuracy and model robustness by integrating ARIMA and LSTM, providing reliable data support for researchers and policy makers.

ARIMA model is one of the most classic methods in time series prediction. Its core idea is to convert non-stationary sequences into stationary sequences through difference operations, then model using autoregressive and moving average components. It includes three key parts: autoregressive (AR) for capturing periodic fluctuations and trends, difference (I) for eliminating non-stationarity, and moving average (MA) for correcting random disturbances. Advantages: solid mathematical foundation, strong interpretability, good performance for trend/seasonal data. Limitation: struggles with highly non-linear complex data.

LSTM is a special recurrent neural network designed to handle long-term dependencies in sequence data. It solves the gradient vanishing problem via gate mechanisms (input, forget, output gates) to control information flow. In greenhouse gas prediction, LSTM excels at learning complex non-linear mappings from factors like economic activity, energy structure, and seasonal fluctuations without manual function setting.

The project’s core innovation is a residual correction fusion framework: 1) Use ARIMA to extract linear components and get baseline predictions; 2) Take residuals (raw data minus ARIMA predictions) as LSTM input to model non-linear features; 3) Sum ARIMA’s linear prediction and LSTM’s residual prediction for final results. This strategy leverages ARIMA’s linear strength and LSTM’s non-linear capability, with good interpretability.

The project uses Python with dependencies: pandas (data processing), NumPy (numerical calculation), scikit-learn (model evaluation), statsmodels (ARIMA modeling), TensorFlow/Keras (LSTM construction), matplotlib (visualization). Data: public multi-region, multi-year greenhouse gas datasets. Code structure: modularized (preprocessing, training, prediction, visualization) with detailed documentation for easy use.

Application value: For researchers, it provides a methodological reference; for policy makers, it offers more accurate decision support. Future directions: extend to multi-region prediction, improve extreme event prediction, integrate external factors (policy changes, tech breakthroughs). This fusion framework can also be applied to energy demand, traffic flow, and economic indicator prediction.

The project represents an important direction in time series prediction: integrating different methods to build robust, interpretable systems instead of chasing new technologies. This pragmatic approach is valuable for climate change research. More such projects will help us better understand and address global climate challenges.