An Explainable, Attention-Enhanced, Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory Neural Network for Joint 48-Hour Forecasting of Temperature, Irradiance, and Relative Humidity

Abstract

This paper presents a Deep Learning (DL) framework for 48-hour forecasting of temperature, solar irradiance, and relative humidity to support Model Predictive Control (MPC) in smart HVAC systems. The approach employs a stacked Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) network with attention, capturing temporal and cross-feature dependencies by jointly predicting all three variables. Historical meteorological data (2019-2022) with encoded cyclical time features were used for training, while 2023 data evaluated generalization. The model achieved Mean Absolute Errors of 1.3 degrees Celsius (temperature), 31 W/m2 (irradiance), and 6.7 percentage points (humidity), outperforming state-of-the-art numerical weather prediction and machine learning benchmarks. Integrated Gradients quantified feature contributions, and attention weights revealed temporal patterns, enhancing interpretability. By combining multivariate forecasting, attention-based DL, and explainability, this work advances data-driven weather prediction. The demonstrated accuracy and transparency highlight the framework's potential for energy-efficient building control through reliable short-term meteorological forecasting.