# Deep Learning for Precipitation Nowcasting: A Benchmark and A New Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03458 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03458/

## Key facts

- Cited by 182 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 12 Jun 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 182)

- [Skillful Precipitation Nowcasting using Deep Generative Models of Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00954/) (2021)
- [GraphCast: Learning skillful medium-range global weather forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.12794/) (2022)
- [PredRNN: A Recurrent Neural Network for Spatiotemporal Predictive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.09504/) (2021)
- [Pangu-Weather: A 3D High-Resolution Model for Fast and Accurate Global Weather Forecast](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02556/) (2022)
- [Earthformer: Exploring Space-Time Transformers for Earth System Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05833/) (2022)
- [Graph Neural Controlled Differential Equations for Traffic Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03558/) (2021)
- [PreDiff: Precipitation Nowcasting with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10422/) (2023)
- [Approximately Equivariant Networks for Imperfectly Symmetric Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11969/) (2022)
- [Temporal Attention Unit: Towards Efficient Spatiotemporal Predictive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.12126/) (2022)
- [Video Prediction Recalling Long-term Motion Context via Memory Alignment Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00924/) (2021)
- [DiffCast: A Unified Framework via Residual Diffusion for Precipitation Nowcasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06734/) (2023)
- [CasCast: Skillful High-resolution Precipitation Nowcasting via Cascaded Modelling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04290/) (2024)
- [MotionRNN: A Flexible Model for Video Prediction with Spacetime-Varying Motions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02243/) (2021)
- [Meta-Learning Dynamics Forecasting Using Task Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.10271/) (2021)
- [VMRNN: Integrating Vision Mamba and LSTM for Efficient and Accurate Spatiotemporal Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16536/) (2024)
- [SwinVRNN: A Data-Driven Ensemble Forecasting Model via Learned Distribution Perturbation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13158/) (2022)
- [SwinRDM: Integrate SwinRNN with Diffusion Model towards High-Resolution and High-Quality Weather Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03110/) (2023)
- [SwinLSTM:Improving Spatiotemporal Prediction Accuracy using Swin Transformer and LSTM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09891/) (2023)
- [A Unified Framework for Event-based Frame Interpolation with Ad-hoc Deblurring in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.05191/) (2023)
- [Broad-UNet: Multi-scale feature learning for nowcasting tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.06442/) (2021)
- [Conformal Contextual Robust Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10003/) (2023)
- [Climate Modeling with Neural Diffusion Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06011/) (2021)
- [MIMO Is All You Need : A Strong Multi-In-Multi-Out Baseline for Video Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04655/) (2022)
- [Multi-modal learning for geospatial vegetation forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16198/) (2023)
- [Fourier Amplitude and Correlation Loss: Beyond Using L2 Loss for Skillful Precipitation Nowcasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23159/) (2024)
- [Deep Learning and Foundation Models for Weather Prediction: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06907/) (2025)
- [Spatial Mixture-of-Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13491/) (2022)
- [Graph Neural Rough Differential Equations for Traffic Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10909/) (2023)
- [Deep learning for precipitation nowcasting: A survey from the perspective of time series forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04867/) (2024)
- [MSPred: Video Prediction at Multiple Spatio-Temporal Scales with Hierarchical Recurrent Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09303/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the goal of making high-resolution forecasts of regional rainfall, precipitation nowcasting has become an important and fundamental technology underlying various public services ranging from rainstorm warnings to flight safety. Recently, the Convolutional LSTM (ConvLSTM) model has been shown to outperform traditional optical flow based methods for precipitation nowcasting, suggesting that deep learning models have a huge potential for solving the problem. However, the convolutional recurrence structure in ConvLSTM-based models is location-invariant while natural motion and transformation (e.g., rotation) are location-variant in general. Furthermore, since deep-learning-based precipitation nowcasting is a newly emerging area, clear evaluation protocols have not yet been established. To address these problems, we propose both a new model and a benchmark for precipitation nowcasting. Specifically, we go beyond ConvLSTM and propose the Trajectory GRU (TrajGRU) model that can actively learn the location-variant structure for recurrent connections. Besides, we provide a benchmark that includes a real-world large-scale dataset from the Hong Kong Observatory, a new training loss, and a comprehensive evaluation protocol to facilitate future research and gauge the state of the art.