arXiv Machine Learning By Jiapei Liu, Ruidong Li, Ting Sun, Guangheng Ni

Tropical Cyclone Attributes in Sparse Autoencoder Features of an AI Weather Model

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The paper investigates how tropical cyclone attributes are represented within the sparse autoencoder (SAE) features of the AI weather model GraphCast. By analyzing 2,115 six‑hourly timesteps from 205 cyclones, the authors map SAE activations to cyclone position, intensity, and pressure structure across multiple layers and decompositions, finding that each attribute is encoded in multiple features and that deeper layers better predict future position and pressure structure. The study demonstrates that the organization of physical‑attribute relations in SAEs is reproducible and can aid in interpreting cyclone‑related information in GraphCast.

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