arXiv Machine Learning

Probabilistic Deep Learning for Drought Forecasting: Role of Internal Climate Variability

arXiv:2608. 01864v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Predicting drought risk is essential for anticipating impacts on water resources, agriculture, ecosystems, and climate adaptation planning.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 19

Evaluating and improving crop-yield forecasting methods during extreme drought

The study evaluates crop‑yield forecasting methods for the 2012 Midwestern US drought, comparing non‑deep learning machine learning models with a deep learning model (VITA) using 16 meteorological predictors. It highlights challenges such as distributional dissimilarity between training and test data, spatial and temporal sparsity, and demonstrates that sample weighting and feature selection improve non‑deep learning models but not VITA. The work contrasts deep versus non‑deep learning approaches and shows how modifications can mitigate issues arising from extreme drought conditions.

By Shrey Gupta, Yi Ming, George Mohler
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 28

SimCast-S2S: An Efficient Generative Model for Subseasonal Precipitation Forecasting via Transfer Learning from Climate Simulations

SimCast‑S2S is a generative latent‑diffusion model designed for probabilistic subseasonal‑to‑seasonal precipitation forecasting. It tackles three key challenges: it uses a diffusion pipeline to capture uncertainty, operates in a compact latent space to enable efficient large‑ensemble generation, and leverages transfer learning with low‑rank adaptation to train on limited reanalysis data after pretraining on climate simulations. The model outperforms deep‑learning baselines and competes with, or surpasses, operational systems such as the ECMWF‑S2S baseline without requiring extensive post‑processing.

By Hiep V. Dang, Antonios Mamalakis
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 25

Improving global precipitation forecasts with an AI weather model trained on satellite observations

The paper presents Laxmi, a retrained version of the AIFS weather model that uses satellite-based precipitation observations instead of ERA5 reanalysis data. Laxmi achieves a 19% improvement in global probabilistic accuracy, reduces drizzle overprediction by 33%, and boosts the 95th percentile Brier skill score by 57%. In a case study of 10 Indian tropical storms, Laxmi accurately forecasted 150 mm event-total precipitation in 7 events, outperforming both the original AIFS and the leading physical model IFS.

By Julian F. Schmitt, Bertrand Delorme, Robert C. King, Yashica Patodia, Tapio Schneider, Aditi Sheshadri, Ravi Jain
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 26

CSU-PCAST: A Dual-Branch Transformer Framework for medium-range ensemble Precipitation Forecasting

arXiv:2510. 20769v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Accurate medium-range precipitation forecasting is essential for hydrometeorological risk management but remains challenging for both numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems and data-driven models.

By Tianyi Xiong, Haonan Chen, Kelly Mahoney, Jingyin Tang, Tim Smith, Janice Bytheway
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 19

Interpretable AI predicts a 2026 summer dry anomaly in central China

A deep‑learning model that converts dynamical circulation forecasts into precipitation estimates predicts a dry anomaly over central China in summer 2026, with consistent signals from March to May. Retrospective tests show the model performs best in analogue years marked by sustained central equatorial Pacific warming, which promotes a cyclonic circulation that drives northerly winds and moisture divergence, suppressing rainfall. Layer‑wise relevance propagation identifies these northerly winds as the key driver, and perturbation tests confirm that removing them eliminates the dry anomaly, demonstrating a physically interpretable link between AI predictions and climate dynamics.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

SimCast-S2S: A Computationally Efficient Diffusion Model for Subseasonal Precipitation Forecasting

SimCast‑S2S is a generative latent‑diffusion framework designed for probabilistic subseasonal‑to‑seasonal precipitation forecasting. It tackles three key challenges: it uses a diffusion‑based generative pipeline for uncertainty quantification, operates in a compact latent space learned by VAEs for efficient large‑ensemble generation, and employs transfer learning with LoRA to overcome limited training data. On reanalysis data, it outperforms deep‑learning baselines and competes with or surpasses state‑of‑the‑art operational systems such as ECMWF‑S2S.

By Hiep V. Dang, Antonios Mamalakis
arXiv AI
Aug 20

Interpretable AI predicts a 2026 summer dry anomaly in central China

A deep learning model that converts dynamical circulation forecasts into precipitation estimates predicts a dry anomaly over central China in the summer of 2026, with consistent signals from March to May. Retrospective tests show the model performs best in analogue years marked by sustained central equatorial Pacific warming, which promotes a cyclonic circulation that drives northerly winds and moisture divergence, suppressing rainfall. Layer‑wise relevance propagation identifies these northerly winds as the key driver, and perturbation tests confirm that removing them eliminates the predicted dry anomaly, providing a physically interpretable explanation for the AI forecast.

By Anran Wang, Wen Shi, Yong Luo, Jianbin Huang, Lijuan Chen, Junhu Zhao, Weixin Jin, Huihui Yuan