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Modern climate projections often suffer from inadequate spatial and temporal resolution due to computational limitations, resulting in inaccurate representations of sub-resolution processes. A promising technique to address this is the Multiscale Modeling Framework (MMF), which embeds a small-domain, kilometer-resolution cloud-resolving model within each atmospheric column of a host climate model to replace traditional convection and cloud parameterizations. Machine learning (ML) offers a unique opportunity to make MMF more accessible by emulating the embedded cloud-resolving model and thereby reducing its substantial computational cost. Although many studies have demonstrated proof-of-concept success of emulating the MMF model with stable hybrid simulations, it remains a challenge to achieve operational-level success with real geography and comprehensive variable emulation, such as explicit cloud condensate coupling. In this study, we present a stable hybrid model capable of integrating for at least 5 years with near operational-level complexity, including real geography, seasonality, explicit predictions of cloud condensate and wind tendencies, and land coupling. Our model demonstrates skillful online performance such as 5-year zonal mean biases when comparing to previous MMF emulation studies. Key factors contributing to this online performance include using an expressive U-Net architecture, leveraging input features that includes large-scale forcings and convection memory, and incorporating microphysical constraints. With microphysical constraints mitigating unrealistic cloud formation, our work is the first work that demonstrates realistic multi-year cloud condensate climatology under the multi-scale modeling framework. Our work showcases the potential of ML parameterization for operational-level climate simulations., Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures in the main text, 5 figures in appendix. This version is a minor editorial update from the initial version

Since the weather is chaotic, forecasts aim to predict the distribution of future states rather than make a single prediction. Recently, multiple data driven weather models have emerged claiming breakthroughs in skill. However, these have mostly been benchmarked using deterministic skill scores, and little is known about their probabilistic skill. Unfortunately, it is hard to fairly compare AI weather models in a probabilistic sense, since variations in choice of ensemble initialization, definition of state, and noise injection methodology become confounding. Moreover, even obtaining ensemble forecast baselines is a substantial engineering challenge given the data volumes involved. We sidestep both problems by applying a decades-old idea -- lagged ensembles -- whereby an ensemble can be constructed from a moderately-sized library of deterministic forecasts. This allows the first parameter-free intercomparison of leading AI weather models' probabilistic skill against an operational baseline. The results reveal that two leading AI weather models, i.e. GraphCast and Pangu, are tied on the probabilistic CRPS metric even though the former outperforms the latter in deterministic scoring. We also reveal how multiple time-step loss functions, which many data-driven weather models have employed, are counter-productive: they improve deterministic metrics at the cost of increased dissipation, deteriorating probabilistic skill. This is confirmed through ablations applied to a spherical Fourier Neural Operator (SFNO) approach to AI weather forecasting. Separate SFNO ablations modulating effective resolution reveal it has a useful effect on ensemble dispersion relevant to achieving good ensemble calibration. We hope these and forthcoming insights from lagged ensembles can help guide the development of AI weather forecasts and have thus shared the diagnostic code., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures

Existing ML-based atmospheric models are not suitable for climate prediction, which requires long-term stability and physical consistency. We present ACE (AI2 Climate Emulator), a 200M-parameter, autoregressive machine learning emulator of an existing comprehensive 100-km resolution global atmospheric model. The formulation of ACE allows evaluation of physical laws such as the conservation of mass and moisture. The emulator is stable for 100 years, nearly conserves column moisture without explicit constraints and faithfully reproduces the reference model's climate, outperforming a challenging baseline on over 90% of tracked variables. ACE requires nearly 100x less wall clock time and is 100x more energy efficient than the reference model using typically available resources. Without fine-tuning, ACE can stably generalize to a previously unseen historical sea surface temperature dataset., Comment: Accepted at Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning: workshop at NeurIPS 2023

Modern climate projections lack adequate spatial and temporal resolution due to computational constraints, leading to inaccuracies in representing critical processes like thunderstorms that occur on the sub-resolution scale. Hybrid methods combining physics with machine learning (ML) offer faster, higher fidelity climate simulations by outsourcing compute-hungry, high-resolution simulations to ML emulators. However, these hybrid ML-physics simulations require domain-specific data and workflows that have been inaccessible to many ML experts. As an extension of the ClimSim dataset (Yu et al., 2024), we present ClimSim-Online, which also includes an end-to-end workflow for developing hybrid ML-physics simulators. The ClimSim dataset includes 5.7 billion pairs of multivariate input/output vectors, capturing the influence of high-resolution, high-fidelity physics on a host climate simulator's macro-scale state. The dataset is global and spans ten years at a high sampling frequency. We provide a cross-platform, containerized pipeline to integrate ML models into operational climate simulators for hybrid testing. We also implement various ML baselines, alongside a hybrid baseline simulator, to highlight the ML challenges of building stable, skillful emulators. The data (https://huggingface.co/datasets/LEAP/ClimSim_high-res) and code (https://leap-stc.github.io/ClimSim and https://github.com/leap-stc/climsim-online) are publicly released to support the development of hybrid ML-physics and high-fidelity climate simulations., Comment: This manuscript is an expanded version of our paper that received the Outstanding Paper Award at the NeurIPS 2023 conference

Due to computational constraints, running global climate models (GCMs) for many years requires a lower spatial grid resolution (${\gtrsim}50$ km) than is optimal for accurately resolving important physical processes. Such processes are approximated in GCMs via subgrid parameterizations, which contribute significantly to the uncertainty in GCM predictions. One approach to improving the accuracy of a coarse-grid global climate model is to add machine-learned state-dependent corrections at each simulation timestep, such that the climate model evolves more like a high-resolution global storm-resolving model (GSRM). We train neural networks to learn the state-dependent temperature, humidity, and radiative flux corrections needed to nudge a 200 km coarse-grid climate model to the evolution of a 3~km fine-grid GSRM. When these corrective ML models are coupled to a year-long coarse-grid climate simulation, the time-mean spatial pattern errors are reduced by 6-25% for land surface temperature and 9-25% for land surface precipitation with respect to a no-ML baseline simulation. The ML-corrected simulations develop other biases in climate and circulation that differ from, but have comparable amplitude to, the baseline simulation.

Cloud microphysical parameterizations in atmospheric models describe the formation and evolution of clouds and precipitation, a central weather and climate process. Cloud-associated latent heating is a primary driver of large and small-scale circulations throughout the global atmosphere, and clouds have important interactions with atmospheric radiation. Clouds are ubiquitous, diverse, and can change rapidly. In this work, we build the first emulator of an entire cloud microphysical parameterization, including fast phase changes. The emulator performs well in offline and online (i.e. when coupled to the rest of the atmospheric model) tests, but shows some developing biases in Antarctica. Sensitivity tests demonstrate that these successes require careful modeling of the mixed discrete-continuous output as well as the input-output structure of the underlying code and physical process., Comment: Accepted at the Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences Workshop at the 36th conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) December 3, 2022

Climate models are complicated software systems that approximate atmospheric and oceanic fluid mechanics at a coarse spatial resolution. Typical climate forecasts only explicitly resolve processes larger than 100 km and approximate any process occurring below this scale (e.g. thunderstorms) using so-called parametrizations. Machine learning could improve upon the accuracy of some traditional physical parametrizations by learning from so-called global cloud-resolving models. We compare the performance of two machine learning models, random forests (RF) and neural networks (NNs), at parametrizing the aggregate effect of moist physics in a 3 km resolution global simulation with an atmospheric model. The NN outperforms the RF when evaluated offline on a testing dataset. However, when the ML models are coupled to an atmospheric model run at 200 km resolution, the NN-assisted simulation crashes with 7 days, while the RF-assisted simulations remain stable. Both runs produce more accurate weather forecasts than a baseline configuration, but globally averaged climate variables drift over longer timescales.

Neural networks are a promising technique for parameterizing sub-grid-scale physics (e.g. moist atmospheric convection) in coarse-resolution climate models, but their lack of interpretability and reliability prevents widespread adoption. For instance, it is not fully understood why neural network parameterizations often cause dramatic instability when coupled to atmospheric fluid dynamics. This paper introduces tools for interpreting their behavior that are customized to the parameterization task. First, we assess the nonlinear sensitivity of a neural network to lower-tropospheric stability and the mid-tropospheric moisture, two widely-studied controls of moist convection. Second, we couple the linearized response functions of these neural networks to simplified gravity-wave dynamics, and analytically diagnose the corresponding phase speeds, growth rates, wavelengths, and spatial structures. To demonstrate their versatility, these techniques are tested on two sets of neural networks, one trained with a super-parametrized version of the Community Atmosphere Model (SPCAM) and the second with a near-global cloud-resolving model (GCRM). Even though the SPCAM simulation has a warmer climate than the cloud-resolving model, both neural networks predict stronger heating/drying in moist and unstable environments, which is consistent with observations. Moreover, the spectral analysis can predict that instability occurs when GCMs are coupled to networks that support gravity waves that are unstable and have phase speeds larger than 5 m/s. In contrast, standing unstable modes do not cause catastrophic instability. Using these tools, differences between the SPCAM- vs. GCRM- trained neural networks are analyzed, and strategies to incrementally improve both of their coupled online performance unveiled.

General circulation models (GCMs) typically have a grid size of 25--200 km. Parametrizations are used to represent diabatic processes such as radiative transfer and cloud microphysics and account for sub-grid-scale motions and variability. Unlike traditional approaches, neural networks (NNs) can readily exploit recent observational datasets and global cloud-system resolving model (CRM) simulations to learn subgrid variability. This article describes an NN parametrization trained by coarse-graining a near-global CRM simulation with a 4~km horizontal grid spacing. The NN predicts the residual heating and moistening averaged over (160 km)^2 grid boxes as a function of the coarse-resolution fields within the same atmospheric column. This NN is coupled to the dynamical core of a GCM with the same 160 km resolution. A recent study described how to train such an NN to be numerically stable when coupled to specified time-evolving advective forcings in a single column model, but feedbacks between NN and GCM components cause spatially-extended simulations to crash within a few days. Analyzing the linearized response of such an NN reveals that it learns to exploit a strong synchrony between precipitation and the atmospheric state above 10 km. Removing these variables from the NN's inputs stabilizes the coupled simulations, which predict the future state more accurately than a coarse-resolution simulation without any parametrizations of sub-grid-scale variability, although the mean state slowly drifts.