Ocean & Sea Ice¶
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Low latency global carbon budget reveals a continuous decline of the land carbon sink during the 2023/24 El Nino event¶
The high growth rate of atmospheric CO2 in 2023 was found to be caused by a severe reduction of the global net land carbon sink. Here we update the global CO2 budget from January 1st to July 1st...The high growth rate of atmospheric CO2 in 2023 was found to be caused by a severe reduction of the global net land carbon sink. Here we update the global CO2 budget from January 1st to July 1st 2024, during which El Niño drought conditions continued to prevail in the Tropics but ceased by March 2024. We used three dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs), machine learning emulators of ocean models, three atmospheric inversions driven by observations from the second Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) satellite, and near-real-time fossil CO2 emissions estimates. In a one-year period from July 2023 to July 2024 covering the El Niño 2023/24 event, we found a record-high CO2 growth rate of 3.66~\(\pm\)~0.09 ppm~yr\(^{-1}\) (\(\pm\)~1 standard deviation) since 1979. Yet, the CO2 growth rate anomaly obtained after removing the long term trend is 1.1 ppm~yr\(^{-1}\), which is marginally smaller than the July--July growth rate anomalies of the two major previous El Niño events in 1997/98 and 2015/16. The atmospheric CO2 growth rate anomaly was primarily driven by a 2.24 GtC~yr\(^{-1}\) reduction in the net land sink including 0.3 GtC~yr\(^{-1}\) of fire emissions, partly offset by a 0.38 GtC~yr\(^{-1}\) increase in the ocean sink relative to the 2015--2022 July--July mean. The tropics accounted for 97.5% of the land CO2 flux anomaly, led by the Amazon (50.6%), central Africa (34%), and Southeast Asia (8.2%), with extra-tropical sources in South Africa and southern Brazil during April--July 2024. Our three DGVMs suggest greater tropical CO2 losses in 2023/2024 than during the two previous large El Niño in 1997/98 and 2015/16, whereas inversions indicate losses more comparable to 2015/16. Overall, this update of the low latency budget highlights the impact of recent El Niño droughts in explaining the high CO2 growth rate until July 2024. more
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CAMulator: Fast Emulation of the Community Atmosphere Model¶
We introduce CAMulator version 1, an auto-regressive machine-learned (ML) emulator of the Community Atmosphere Model version 6 (CAM6) that simulates the next atmospheric state given the prescribed...We introduce CAMulator version 1, an auto-regressive machine-learned (ML) emulator of the Community Atmosphere Model version 6 (CAM6) that simulates the next atmospheric state given the prescribed sea surface temperatures and incoming solar radiation. CAMulator explicitly conserves global dry air mass, moisture, and total atmospheric energy while remaining numerically stable over indefinite climate integrations. It successfully reproduces the annual CAM6 climatology and key modes of climate variability, including the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, and the Pacific-North American pattern, with slightly muted variability. When forced with sea surface temperature (SST) outside the training distribution, CAMulator exhibits a systematic cold bias in high-latitude regions, particularly in boreal winter, likely due to the absence of interactive land and sea ice. Nonetheless, CAMulator achieves these results with a 350 times speedup over CAM6, making it an efficient alternative for generating large ensembles. more
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Simulation-informed deep learning for enhanced SWOT observations of fine-scale ocean dynamics¶
Oceanic processes at fine scales are crucial yet difficult to observe accurately due to limitations in satellite and in-situ measurements. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission...Oceanic processes at fine scales are crucial yet difficult to observe accurately due to limitations in satellite and in-situ measurements. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission provides high-resolution Sea Surface Height (SSH) data, though noise patterns often obscure fine scale structures. Current methods struggle with noisy data or require extensive supervised training, limiting their effectiveness on real-world observations. We introduce SIMPGEN (Simulation-Informed Metric and Prior for Generative Ensemble Networks), an unsupervised adversarial learning framework combining real SWOT observations with simulated reference data. SIMPGEN leverages wavelet-informed neural metrics to distinguish noisy from clean fields, guiding realistic SSH reconstructions. Applied to SWOT data, SIMPGEN effectively removes noise, preserving fine-scale features better than existing neural methods. This robust, unsupervised approach not only improves SWOT SSH data interpretation but also demonstrates strong potential for broader oceanographic applications, including data assimilation and super-resolution. more
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A Study on Monthly Marine Heatwave Forecasts in New Zealand: An Investigation of Imbalanced Regression Loss Functions with Neural Network Models¶
Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are extreme ocean-temperature events with significant impacts on marine ecosystems and related industries. Accurate forecasts (one to six months ahead) of MHWs would aid in...Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are extreme ocean-temperature events with significant impacts on marine ecosystems and related industries. Accurate forecasts (one to six months ahead) of MHWs would aid in mitigating these impacts. However, forecasting MHWs presents a challenging imbalanced regression task due to the rarity of extreme temperature anomalies in comparison to more frequent moderate conditions. In this study, we examine monthly MHW forecasts for 12 locations around New Zealand. We use a fully-connected neural network and compare standard and specialized regression loss functions, including the mean squared error (MSE), the mean absolute error (MAE), the Huber, the weighted MSE, the focal-R, the balanced MSE, and a proposed scaling-weighted MSE. Results show that (i) short lead times (one month) are considerably more predictable than three- and six-month leads, (ii) models trained with the standard MSE or MAE losses excel at forecasting average conditions but struggle to capture extremes, and (iii) specialized loss functions such as the balanced MSE and our scaling-weighted MSE substantially improve forecasting of MHW and suspected MHW events. These findings underscore the importance of tailored loss functions for imbalanced regression, particularly in forecasting rare but impactful events such as MHWs. more
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Uncertainty-permitting machine learning reveals sources of dynamic sea level predictability across daily-to-seasonal timescales¶
Reliable dynamic sea level forecasts are hindered by numerous sources of uncertainty on daily-to-seasonal timescales (1-180 days) due to atmospheric boundary conditions and internal ocean...Reliable dynamic sea level forecasts are hindered by numerous sources of uncertainty on daily-to-seasonal timescales (1-180 days) due to atmospheric boundary conditions and internal ocean variability. Studies have demonstrated that certain initial states can extend predictability horizons; thus, identifying these initial conditions may help improve forecast skill. Here, we identify sources of dynamic sea level predictability on daily-to-seasonal timescales using neural networks trained on CESM2 large ensemble data to forecast dynamic sea level. The forecasts yield not only a point estimate for sea level but also a standard deviation to quantify forecast uncertainty based on the initial conditions. Forecasted uncertainties can be leveraged to identify state-dependent sources of predictability at most locations and forecast leads. Network forecasts, particularly in the low-latitude Indo-Pacific, exhibit skillful deterministic predictions and skillfully forecast exceedance probabilities relative to local linear baselines. For networks trained at Guam and in the western Indian Ocean, the transfer of sources of predictability from local sources to remote sources is presented by the deteriorating utility of initial condition information for predicting exceedance events. Propagating Rossby waves are identified as a potential source of predictability for dynamic sea level at Guam. In the Indian Ocean, persistence of thermosteric sea level anomalies from the Indian Ocean Dipole may be a source of predictability on subseasonal timescales, but El Niño drives predictability on seasonal timescales. This work shows how uncertainty-quantifying machine learning can help identify changes in sources of state-dependent predictability over a range of forecast leads. more
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Diving Deep: Forecasting Sea Surface Temperatures and Anomalies¶
This overview paper details the findings from the Diving Deep: Forecasting Sea Surface Temperatures and Anomalies Challenge at the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice...This overview paper details the findings from the Diving Deep: Forecasting Sea Surface Temperatures and Anomalies Challenge at the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD) 2024. The challenge focused on the data-driven predictability of global sea surface temperatures (SSTs), a key factor in climate forecasting, ecosystem management, fisheries management, and climate change monitoring. The challenge involved forecasting SST anomalies (SSTAs) three months in advance using historical data and included a special task of predicting SSTAs nine months ahead for the Baltic Sea. Participants utilized various machine learning approaches to tackle the task, leveraging data from ERA5. This paper discusses the methodologies employed, the results obtained, and the lessons learned, offering insights into the future of climate-related predictive modeling. more
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LangYa: Revolutionizing Cross-Spatiotemporal Ocean Forecasting¶
Ocean forecasting is crucial for both scientific research and societal benefits. Currently, the most accurate forecasting systems are global ocean forecasting systems (GOFSs), which represent the...Ocean forecasting is crucial for both scientific research and societal benefits. Currently, the most accurate forecasting systems are global ocean forecasting systems (GOFSs), which represent the ocean state variables (OSVs) as discrete grids and solve partial differential equations (PDEs) governing the transitions of oceanic state variables using numerical methods. However, GOFSs processes are computationally expensive and prone to cumulative errors. Recently, large artificial intelligence (AI)-based models significantly boosted forecasting speed and accuracy. Unfortunately, building a large AI ocean forecasting system that can be considered cross-spatiotemporal and air-sea coupled forecasts remains a significant challenge. Here, we introduce LangYa, a cross-spatiotemporal and air-sea coupled ocean forecasting system. Results demonstrate that the time embedding module in LangYa enables a single model to make forecasts with lead times ranging from 1 to 7 days. The air-sea coupled module effectively simulates air-sea interactions. The ocean self-attention module improves network stability and accelerates convergence during training, and the adaptive thermocline loss function improves the accuracy of thermocline forecasting. Compared to existing numerical and AI-based ocean forecasting systems, LangYa uses 27 years of global ocean data from the Global Ocean Reanalysis and Simulation version 12 (GLORYS12) for training and achieves more reliable deterministic forecasting results for OSVs. LangYa forecasting system provides global ocean researchers with access to a powerful software tool for accurate ocean forecasting and opens a new paradigm for ocean science. more
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TSformer: A Non-autoregressive Spatial-temporal Transformers for 30-day Ocean Eddy-Resolving Forecasting¶
Ocean forecasting is critical for various applications and is essential for understanding air-sea interactions, which contribute to mitigating the impacts of extreme events. State-of-the-art ocean...Ocean forecasting is critical for various applications and is essential for understanding air-sea interactions, which contribute to mitigating the impacts of extreme events. State-of-the-art ocean numerical forecasting systems can offer lead times of up to 10 days with a spatial resolution of 10 kilometers, although they are computationally expensive. While data-driven forecasting models have demonstrated considerable potential and speed, they often primarily focus on spatial variations while neglecting temporal dynamics. This paper presents TSformer, a novel non-autoregressive spatiotemporal transformer designed for medium-range ocean eddy-resolving forecasting, enabling forecasts of up to 30 days in advance. We introduce an innovative hierarchical U-Net encoder-decoder architecture based on 3D Swin Transformer blocks, which extends the scope of local attention computation from spatial to spatiotemporal contexts to reduce accumulation errors. TSformer is trained on 28 years of homogeneous, high-dimensional 3D ocean reanalysis datasets, supplemented by three 2D remote sensing datasets for surface forcing. Based on the near-real-time operational forecast results from 2023, comparative performance assessments against in situ profiles and satellite observation data indicate that, TSformer exhibits forecast performance comparable to leading numerical ocean forecasting models while being orders of magnitude faster. Unlike autoregressive models, TSformer maintains 3D consistency in physical motion, ensuring long-term coherence and stability in extended forecasts. Furthermore, the TSformer model, which incorporates surface auxiliary observational data, effectively simulates the vertical cooling and mixing effects induced by Super Typhoon Saola. more
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Improved Forecasts of Global Extreme Marine Heatwaves Through a Physics-guided Data-driven Approach¶
The unusually warm sea surface temperature events known as marine heatwaves (MHWs) have a profound impact on marine ecosystems. Accurate prediction of extreme MHWs has significant scientific and...The unusually warm sea surface temperature events known as marine heatwaves (MHWs) have a profound impact on marine ecosystems. Accurate prediction of extreme MHWs has significant scientific and financial worth. However, existing methods still have certain limitations, especially in the most extreme MHWs. In this study, to address these issues, based on the physical nature of MHWs, we created a novel deep learning neural network that is capable of accurate 10-day MHW forecasting. Our framework significantly improves the forecast ability of extreme MHWs through two specially designed modules inspired by numerical models: a coupler and a probabilistic data argumentation. The coupler simulates the driving effect of atmosphere on MHWs while the probabilistic data argumentation approaches significantly boost the forecast ability of extreme MHWs based on the idea of ensemble forecast. Compared with traditional numerical prediction, our framework has significantly higher accuracy and requires fewer computational resources. What's more, explainable AI methods show that wind forcing is the primary driver of MHW evolution and reveal its relation with air-sea heat exchange. Overall, our model provides a framework for understanding MHWs' driving processes and operational forecasts in the future. more
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Global Estimation of Subsurface Eddy Kinetic Energy of Mesoscale Eddies Using a Multiple-input Residual Neural Network¶
Oceanic eddy kinetic energy (EKE) is a key quantity for measuring the intensity of mesoscale eddies and for parameterizing eddy effects in ocean climate models. Three decades of satellite altimetry...Oceanic eddy kinetic energy (EKE) is a key quantity for measuring the intensity of mesoscale eddies and for parameterizing eddy effects in ocean climate models. Three decades of satellite altimetry observations allow a global assessment of sea surface information. However, the subsurface EKE with spatial filter has not been systematically studied due to the sparseness of subsurface observational data. The subsurface EKE can be inferred both theoretically and numerically from sea surface observations but is limited by the issue of decreasing correlation with sea surface variables as depth increases. In this work, inspired by the Taylor-series expansion of subsurface EKE, a multiple-input neural network approach is proposed to reconstruct the subsurface monthly mean EKE from sea surface variables and subsurface climatological variables (e.g., horizontal filtered velocity gradients). Four neural networks are trained on a high-resolution global ocean reanalysis dataset, namely, surface-input fully connected neural network model (FCNN), surface-input Residual neural network model (ResNet), multiple-input fully connected neural network model (MI-FCNN), and multiple-input residual neural network model (MI-ResNet). The proposed MI-FCNN and MI-ResNet models integrate the surface input variables and the vertical profiles of subsurface variables. The MI-ResNet model outperforms the FCNN, ResNet, and MI-FCNN models, and traditional physics-based models in both regional and global reconstruction of subsurface EKE in the upper 2000 m. In addition, the MI-ResNet model performs well for both regional and global observational data based on transfer learning. These findings reveal the potential of the MI-ResNet model for efficient and accurate reconstruction of subsurface oceanic variables. more
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AI-powered Digital Twin of the Ocean: Reliable Uncertainty Quantification for Real-time Wave Height Prediction with Deep Ensemble¶
Environmental pollution and fossil fuel depletion have prompted the need for renewable energy-based power generation. However, its stability is often challenged by low energy density and...Environmental pollution and fossil fuel depletion have prompted the need for renewable energy-based power generation. However, its stability is often challenged by low energy density and non-stationary conditions. Wave energy converters (WECs), in particular, need reliable real-time wave height prediction to address these issues caused by irregular wave patterns, which can lead to the inefficient and unstable operation of WECs. In this study, we propose an AI-powered reliable real-time wave height prediction model that integrates long short-term memory (LSTM) networks for temporal prediction with deep ensemble (DE) for robust uncertainty quantification (UQ), ensuring high accuracy and reliability. To further enhance the reliability, uncertainty calibration is applied, which has proven to significantly improve the quality of the quantified uncertainty. Using real operational data from an oscillating water column-wave energy converter (OWC-WEC) system in Jeju, South Korea, the model achieves notable accuracy (R2 > 0.9), while increasing uncertainty quality by over 50% through simple calibration technique. Furthermore, a comprehensive parametric study is conducted to explore the effects of key model hyperparameters, offering valuable guidelines for diverse operational scenarios, characterized by differences in wavelength, amplitude, and period. These results demonstrate the model's capability to deliver reliable predictions, facilitating digital twin of the ocean. more
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GLONET: Mercator's end-to-end neural Global Ocean forecasting system¶
Accurate ocean forecasting is crucial in different areas ranging from science to decision making. Recent advancements in data-driven models have shown significant promise, particularly in weather...Accurate ocean forecasting is crucial in different areas ranging from science to decision making. Recent advancements in data-driven models have shown significant promise, particularly in weather forecasting community, but yet no data-driven approaches have matched the accuracy and the scalability of traditional global ocean forecasting systems that rely on physics-driven numerical models and can be very computationally expensive, depending on their spatial resolution or complexity. Here, we introduce GLONET, a global ocean neural network-based forecasting system, developed by Mercator Ocean International. GLONET is trained on the global Mercator Ocean physical reanalysis GLORYS12 to integrate physics-based principles through neural operators and networks, which dynamically capture local-global interactions within a unified, scalable framework, ensuring high small-scale accuracy and efficient dynamics. GLONET's performance is assessed and benchmarked against two other forecasting systems: the global Mercator Ocean analysis and forecasting 1/12 high-resolution physical system GLO12 and a recent neural-based system also trained from GLORYS12. A series of comprehensive validation metrics is proposed, specifically tailored for neural network-based ocean forecasting systems, which extend beyond traditional point-wise error assessments that can introduce bias towards neural networks optimized primarily to minimize such metrics. The preliminary evaluation of GLONET shows promising results, for temperature, sea surface height, salinity and ocean currents. GLONET's experimental daily forecast are accessible through the European Digital Twin Ocean platform EDITO. more
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Advancing Marine Heatwave Forecasts: An Integrated Deep Learning Approach¶
Marine heatwaves (MHWs), an extreme climate phenomenon, pose significant challenges to marine ecosystems and industries, with their frequency and intensity increasing due to climate change. This...Marine heatwaves (MHWs), an extreme climate phenomenon, pose significant challenges to marine ecosystems and industries, with their frequency and intensity increasing due to climate change. This study introduces an integrated deep learning approach to forecast short-to-long-term MHWs on a global scale. The approach combines graph representation for modeling spatial properties in climate data, imbalanced regression to handle skewed data distributions, and temporal diffusion to enhance forecast accuracy across various lead times. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that synthesizes three spatiotemporal anomaly methodologies to predict MHWs. Additionally, we introduce a method for constructing graphs that avoids isolated nodes and provide a new publicly available sea surface temperature anomaly graph dataset. We examine the trade-offs in the selection of loss functions and evaluation metrics for MHWs. We analyze spatial patterns in global MHW predictability by focusing on historical hotspots, and our approach demonstrates better performance compared to traditional numerical models in regions such as the middle south Pacific, equatorial Atlantic near Africa, south Atlantic, and high-latitude Indian Ocean. We highlight the potential of temporal diffusion to replace the conventional sliding window approach for long-term forecasts, achieving improved prediction up to six months in advance. These insights not only establish benchmarks for machine learning applications in MHW forecasting but also enhance understanding of general climate forecasting methodologies. more
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Samudra: An AI Global Ocean Emulator for Climate¶
AI emulators for forecasting have emerged as powerful tools that can outperform conventional numerical predictions. The next frontier is to build emulators for long climate simulations with skill...AI emulators for forecasting have emerged as powerful tools that can outperform conventional numerical predictions. The next frontier is to build emulators for long climate simulations with skill across a range of spatiotemporal scales, a particularly important goal for the ocean. Our work builds a skillful global emulator of the ocean component of a state-of-the-art climate model. We emulate key ocean variables, sea surface height, horizontal velocities, temperature, and salinity, across their full depth. We use a modified ConvNeXt UNet architecture trained on multi-depth levels of ocean data. We show that the ocean emulator - Samudra - which exhibits no drift relative to the truth, can reproduce the depth structure of ocean variables and their interannual variability. Samudra is stable for centuries and 150 times faster than the original ocean model. Samudra struggles to capture the correct magnitude of the forcing trends and simultaneously remain stable, requiring further work. more
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Assessing the potential of state-of-the-art machine learning and physics-informed machine learning in predicting sea surface temperature¶
The growing adoption of machine learning (ML) in modelling atmospheric and oceanic processes offers a promising alternative to traditional numerical methods. It is essential to benchmark the...The growing adoption of machine learning (ML) in modelling atmospheric and oceanic processes offers a promising alternative to traditional numerical methods. It is essential to benchmark the performance of both ML and physics-informed ML (PINN) models to evaluate their predictive skill, particularly for short- to medium-term forecasting. In this study, we utilize gridded sea surface temperature (SST) data and six atmospheric predictors (cloud cover, relative humidity, solar radiation, surface pressure, u-component of velocity, and v-component of velocity) to capture both spatial and temporal patterns in SST predictions. more
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A Comparison of Machine Learning Algorithms for Predicting Sea Surface Temperature in the Great Barrier Reef Region¶
Predicting Sea Surface Temperature (SST) in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region is crucial for the effective management of its fragile ecosystems. This study provides a rigorous comparative analysis...Predicting Sea Surface Temperature (SST) in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region is crucial for the effective management of its fragile ecosystems. This study provides a rigorous comparative analysis of several machine learning techniques to identify the most effective method for SST prediction in this area. We evaluate the performance of ridge regression, Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO), Random Forest, and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) algorithms. Our results reveal that while LASSO and ridge regression perform well, Random Forest and XGBoost significantly outperform them in terms of predictive accuracy, as evidenced by lower Mean Squared Error (MSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Root Mean Squared Prediction Error (RMSPE). Additionally, XGBoost demonstrated superior performance in minimizing Kullback- Leibler Divergence (KLD), indicating a closer alignment of predicted probability distributions with actual observations. These findings highlight the efficacy of using ensemble methods, particularly XGBoost, for predicting sea surface temperatures, making them valuable tools for climatological and environmental modeling. more
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Accelerate Coastal Ocean Circulation Model with AI Surrogate¶
Nearly 900 million people live in low-lying coastal zones around the world and bear the brunt of impacts from more frequent and severe hurricanes and storm surges. Oceanographers simulate ocean...Nearly 900 million people live in low-lying coastal zones around the world and bear the brunt of impacts from more frequent and severe hurricanes and storm surges. Oceanographers simulate ocean current circulation along the coasts to develop early warning systems that save lives and prevent loss and damage to property from coastal hazards. Traditionally, such simulations are conducted using coastal ocean circulation models such as the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS), which usually runs on an HPC cluster with multiple CPU cores. However, the process is time-consuming and energy expensive. While coarse-grained ROMS simulations offer faster alternatives, they sacrifice detail and accuracy, particularly in complex coastal environments. Recent advances in deep learning and GPU architecture have enabled the development of faster AI (neural network) surrogates. This paper introduces an AI surrogate based on a 4D Swin Transformer to simulate coastal tidal wave propagation in an estuary for both hindcast and forecast (up to 12 days). Our approach not only accelerates simulations but also incorporates a physics-based constraint to detect and correct inaccurate results, ensuring reliability while minimizing manual intervention. We develop a fully GPU-accelerated workflow, optimizing the model training and inference pipeline on NVIDIA DGX-2 A100 GPUs. Our experiments demonstrate that our AI surrogate reduces the time cost of 12-day forecasting of traditional ROMS simulations from 9,908 seconds (on 512 CPU cores) to 22 seconds (on one A100 GPU), achieving over 450\(\times\) speedup while maintaining high-quality simulation results. This work contributes to oceanographic modeling by offering a fast, accurate, and physically consistent alternative to traditional simulation models, particularly for real-time forecasting in rapid disaster response. more
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SIFM: A Foundation Model for Multi-granularity Arctic Sea Ice Forecasting¶
Arctic sea ice performs a vital role in global climate and has paramount impacts on both polar ecosystems and coastal communities. In the last few years, multiple deep learning based pan-Arctic sea...Arctic sea ice performs a vital role in global climate and has paramount impacts on both polar ecosystems and coastal communities. In the last few years, multiple deep learning based pan-Arctic sea ice concentration (SIC) forecasting methods have emerged and showcased superior performance over physics-based dynamical models. However, previous methods forecast SIC at a fixed temporal granularity, e.g. sub-seasonal or seasonal, thus only leveraging inter-granularity information and overlooking the plentiful inter-granularity correlations. SIC at various temporal granularities exhibits cumulative effects and are naturally consistent, with short-term fluctuations potentially impacting long-term trends and long-term trends provides effective hints for facilitating short-term forecasts in Arctic sea ice. Therefore, in this study, we propose to cultivate temporal multi-granularity that naturally derived from Arctic sea ice reanalysis data and provide a unified perspective for modeling SIC via our Sea Ice Foundation Model. SIFM is delicately designed to leverage both intra-granularity and inter-granularity information for capturing granularity-consistent representations that promote forecasting skills. Our extensive experiments show that SIFM outperforms off-the-shelf deep learning models for their specific temporal granularity. more
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Regional Ocean Forecasting with Hierarchical Graph Neural Networks¶
Accurate ocean forecasting systems are vital for understanding marine dynamics, which play a crucial role in environmental management and climate adaptation strategies. Traditional numerical solvers,...Accurate ocean forecasting systems are vital for understanding marine dynamics, which play a crucial role in environmental management and climate adaptation strategies. Traditional numerical solvers, while effective, are computationally expensive and time-consuming. Recent advancements in machine learning have revolutionized weather forecasting, offering fast and energy-efficient alternatives. Building on these advancements, we introduce SeaCast, a neural network designed for high-resolution, medium-range ocean forecasting. SeaCast employs a graph-based framework to effectively handle the complex geometry of ocean grids and integrates external forcing data tailored to the regional ocean context. Our approach is validated through experiments at a high spatial resolution using the operational numerical model of the Mediterranean Sea provided by the Copernicus Marine Service, along with both numerical and data-driven atmospheric forcings. more
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IceDiff: High Resolution and High-Quality Sea Ice Forecasting with Generative Diffusion Prior¶
Variation of Arctic sea ice has significant impacts on polar ecosystems, transporting routes, coastal communities, and global climate. Tracing the change of sea ice at a finer scale is paramount for...Variation of Arctic sea ice has significant impacts on polar ecosystems, transporting routes, coastal communities, and global climate. Tracing the change of sea ice at a finer scale is paramount for both operational applications and scientific studies. Recent pan-Arctic sea ice forecasting methods that leverage advances in artificial intelligence has made promising progress over numerical models. However, forecasting sea ice at higher resolutions is still under-explored. To bridge the gap, we propose a two-staged deep learning framework, IceDiff, to forecast sea ice concentration at finer scales. IceDiff first leverages an independently trained vision transformer to generate coarse yet superior forecasting over previous methods at a regular 25km x 25km grid. This high-quality sea ice forecasting can be utilized as reliable guidance for the next stage. Subsequently, an unconditional diffusion model pre-trained on sea ice concentration maps is utilized for sampling down-scaled sea ice forecasting via a zero-shot guided sampling strategy and a patch-based method. For the first time, IceDiff demonstrates sea ice forecasting with the 6.25km x 6.25km resolution. IceDiff extends the boundary of existing sea ice forecasting models and more importantly, its capability to generate high-resolution sea ice concentration data is vital for pragmatic usages and research. more
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Multi-scale decomposition of sea surface height snapshots using machine learning¶
Knowledge of ocean circulation is important for understanding and predicting weather and climate, and managing the blue economy. This circulation can be estimated through Sea Surface Height (SSH)...Knowledge of ocean circulation is important for understanding and predicting weather and climate, and managing the blue economy. This circulation can be estimated through Sea Surface Height (SSH) observations, but requires decomposing the SSH into contributions from balanced and unbalanced motions (BMs and UBMs). This decomposition is particularly pertinent for the novel SWOT satellite, which measures SSH at an unprecedented spatial resolution. Specifically, the requirement, and the goal of this work, is to decompose instantaneous SSH into BMs and UBMs. While a few studies using deep learning (DL) approaches have shown promise in framing this decomposition as an image-to-image translation task, these models struggle to work well across a wide range of spatial scales and require extensive training data, which is scarce in this domain. These challenges are not unique to our task, and pervade many problems requiring multi-scale fidelity. We show that these challenges can be addressed by using zero-phase component analysis (ZCA) whitening and data augmentation; making this a viable option for SSH decomposition across scales. more
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Modeling Snow on Sea Ice using Physics Guided Machine Learning¶
Snow is a crucial element of the sea ice system, affecting sea ice growth and decay due to its low thermal conductivity and high albedo. Despite its importance, present-day climate models have an...Snow is a crucial element of the sea ice system, affecting sea ice growth and decay due to its low thermal conductivity and high albedo. Despite its importance, present-day climate models have an idealized representation of snow, often including only single-layer thermodynamics and omitting several processes that shape its properties. Although advanced snow process models like SnowModel exist, they are often excluded from climate modeling due to their high computational costs. SnowModel simulates snow depth, density, blowing-snow redistribution, sublimation, grain size, and thermal conductivity in a multi-layer snowpack. It operates with high spatial (1 meter) and temporal (1 hour) resolution. However, for large regions like the Arctic Ocean, these high-resolution simulations face challenges such as slow processing and large resource requirements. Data-driven emulators are used to address these issues, but they often lack generalizability and consistency with physical laws. In our study, we address these challenges by developing a physics-guided emulator that incorporates physical laws governing changes in snow density due to compaction. We evaluated three machine learning models: Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Physics-Guided LSTM, and Random Forest across five Arctic regions. All models achieved high accuracy, with the Physics-Guided LSTM showing the best performance in accuracy and generalizability. Our approach offers a faster way to emulate SnowModel with a speedup of over 9000 times, maintaining high fidelity. more
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Sea ice floe segmentation in close-range optical imagery using active contour and foundation models¶
The size of sea ice floes in the marginal ice zone (MIZ) is a key factor influencing ice coverage, albedo, wave propagation, and ocean--atmosphere energy exchanges. Floe size can be observed by...The size of sea ice floes in the marginal ice zone (MIZ) is a key factor influencing ice coverage, albedo, wave propagation, and ocean--atmosphere energy exchanges. Floe size can be observed by processing visual-range imagery from ships, aircraft, or satellites. However, autonomously capturing floe boundaries remains challenging, particularly due to sea ice heterogeneity, which impairs boundary definition and reduces image clarity. This study evaluates the accuracy of sea ice floe segmentation using the gradient vector flow (GVF) active contour method, the deep learning-based Segment Anything Model (SAM), and a hybrid approach combining GVF and SAM. Methods are evaluated on a representative subset of a large dataset of close-range, high-resolution imagery collected from cameras aboard an icebreaker during an Antarctic winter expedition. Spanning a wide range of ice conditions and image clarity in the MIZ, the subset provides a rigorous segmentation test bed. Performance is assessed in terms of floe detection accuracy, size distribution, and ice concentration, with results compared against a manually segmented benchmark. Results indicate SAM, in prompt-driven mode, offers the best balance between accuracy and computational efficiency. Its strong performance in estimating sea ice concentration and detecting floes, while maintaining close agreement with benchmark floe size distributions, makes it suitable for real-time applications and scalable analyses of large imagery datasets. Compared with SAM, the combined SAM-GVF method provides more accurate floe boundary delineation, although at much higher computational cost, and is therefore better suited for analyses requiring precise floe shapes. more
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Orca: Ocean Significant Wave Height Estimation with Spatio-temporally Aware Large Language Models¶
Significant wave height (SWH) is a vital metric in marine science, and accurate SWH estimation is crucial for various applications, e.g., marine energy development, fishery, early warning systems for...Significant wave height (SWH) is a vital metric in marine science, and accurate SWH estimation is crucial for various applications, e.g., marine energy development, fishery, early warning systems for potential risks, etc. Traditional SWH estimation methods that are based on numerical models and physical theories are hindered by computational inefficiencies. Recently, machine learning has emerged as an appealing alternative to improve accuracy and reduce computational time. However, due to limited observational technology and high costs, the scarcity of real-world data restricts the potential of machine learning models. To overcome these limitations, we propose an ocean SWH estimation framework, namely Orca. Specifically, Orca enhances the limited spatio-temporal reasoning abilities of classic LLMs with a novel spatiotemporal aware encoding module. By segmenting the limited buoy observational data temporally, encoding the buoys' locations spatially, and designing prompt templates, Orca capitalizes on the robust generalization ability of LLMs to estimate significant wave height effectively with limited data. Experimental results on the Gulf of Mexico demonstrate that Orca achieves state-of-the-art performance in SWH estimation. more
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Dynamic-Mode Decomposition of Geostrophically Balanced Motions from SWOT Altimetry¶
The decomposition of oceanic flow into its balanced and unbalanced motions carries theoretical and practical significance for the oceanographic community. These two motions have distinct dynamical...The decomposition of oceanic flow into its balanced and unbalanced motions carries theoretical and practical significance for the oceanographic community. These two motions have distinct dynamical characteristics and affect the transport of tracers differently from one another. The launch of Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite provides a prime opportunity to diagnose the surface balanced and unbalanced motions on a global scale at an unprecedented spatial resolution. Here, we apply dynamic-mode decomposition (DMD), a linear-algebraic data-driven method, to a tidally-forced numerical simulation and one-day-repeat SWOT observations of sea-surface height (SSH) in the Gulf Stream extension. DMD is able to separate out the spatial modes associated with sub-inertial periods from super-inertial periods. The sub-inertial modes of DMD can be used to extract geostrophically balanced motions from SSH fields, which have an imprint of internal tides and gravity waves. We utilize the statistical relation between relative vorticity and strain rate as the metric to gauge the extraction of geostrophy. more