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Machine-learned climate model corrections from a global storm-resolving model: Performance across the annual cycle
  • +6
  • Anna Kwa,
  • Spencer Koncius Clark,
  • Brian Henn,
  • Noah D Brenowitz,
  • Jeremy McGibbon,
  • Oliver Watt-Meyer,
  • W. Andre Perkins,
  • Lucas Harris,
  • Christopher S. Bretherton
Anna Kwa
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Spencer Koncius Clark
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence / NOAA-GFDL
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Brian Henn
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)
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Noah D Brenowitz
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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Jeremy McGibbon
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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Oliver Watt-Meyer
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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W. Andre Perkins
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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Lucas Harris
GFDL
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Christopher S. Bretherton
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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Abstract

One approach to improving the accuracy of a coarse-grid global climate model is to add machine-learned state-dependent corrections to the prognosed model tendencies, such that the climate model evolves more like a reference fine-grid global storm-resolving model (GSRM). Our past work demonstrating this approach was trained with short (40-day) simulations of GFDL’s X-SHiELD GSRM with 3 km global horizontal grid spacing. Here, we extend this approach to span the full annual cycle by training and testing our machine learning (ML) using a new year-long GSRM simulation. Our corrective ML models are trained by learning the state-dependent tendencies of temperature and humidity and surface radiative fluxes needed to nudge a closely related 200~km grid coarse model, FV3GFS, to the GSRM evolution. Coarse-grid simulations adding these learned ML corrections run stably for multiple years. Compared to a no-ML baseline, the time-mean spatial pattern errors with respect to the fine-grid target are reduced by 6-25% for land surface temperature and 9-25% for land surface precipitation. The ML-corrected simulations develop other biases in climate and circulation that differ from, but have comparable amplitude to, the no-ML baseline simulation.