Significant wave height (SWH) is a key physical parameter influencing the safety of shipping, fisheries, and marine engineering projects, and is closely related to climate change and marine disasters. Existing models struggle to balance a high prediction accuracy with low parameter counts, and are challenging to deploy on platforms such as buoys. To address these issues, this study proposes an innovative method for SWH prediction by combining Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) with a residual correction mechanism in a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network. This method utilizes SSA to decompose SWH time series, accurately extracting its main feature modes as inputs to the LSTM network and significantly enhancing the model’s ability to capture time-series data. Additionally, a residual correction module is introduced to fine-tune the prediction results, effectively improving the model’s 12 h forecasting accuracy. The experimental results show that for 1, 3, 6, and 12 h SWH predictions, by incorporating SSA and the residual correction module, the model reduces the Mean Squared Error (MSE), Root-Mean-Squared Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) by 60–95%, and increases the coefficient of determination (R²) by 2–60%. The proposed model has only 10% of the parameters for LSTM based on Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD), striking an excellent balance between prediction accuracy and computational efficiency. This study provides a new methodology for deploying SWH prediction models on platforms such as buoys, and holds significant application value in marine disaster warning and environmental monitoring.

Abnormal tidal levels pose a serious threat to maritime navigation, coastal infrastructure, and human life and property. Therefore, it is crucial to accurately predict tidal levels. However, due to the influence of topography and meteorology, tidal levels exhibit complex and non-stationary characteristics, making high-precision prediction a significant challenge. This study proposes a tidal prediction model, named SVMD-BiLSTM-Residual Decomposition (SBRD), which combines Successive Variational Mode Decomposition (SVMD) and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) networks. SBRD decomposes non-stationary tidal signals into simpler intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) using SVMD. Each IMF is then independently predicted using a BiLSTM network, and the final prediction is obtained through signal reconstruction. Experimental results show that SBRD accurately predicts tidal levels within a 24 h horizon and maintains robust performance during abnormal tidal events, such as acqua alta. Compared to other models, SBRD achieves the highest prediction accuracy and the lowest error, with a Coefficient of Determination (R²) exceeding 99%, a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 1.33 cm or less, and a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) within 2.13 cm for tidal forecasts within a 24 h horizon. These results demonstrate that SBRD effectively enhances the accuracy of tidal level prediction, contributing to the advancement of marine economic technologies and the prevention and mitigation of marine disasters.