# Improving data-driven global weather prediction using deep convolutional neural networks on a cubed sphere

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.11927 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.11927/

## Key facts

- Cited by 96 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 15 Mar 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 96)

- [FourCastNet: A Global Data-driven High-resolution Weather Model using Adaptive Fourier Neural Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11214/) (2022)
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- [FuXi: A cascade machine learning forecasting system for 15-day global weather forecast](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.12873/) (2023)
- [Neural General Circulation Models for Weather and Climate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07222/) (2023)
- [WeatherBench 2: A benchmark for the next generation of data-driven global weather models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15560/) (2023)
- [Spherical Fourier Neural Operators: Learning Stable Dynamics on the Sphere](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03838/) (2023)
- [PDE-Refiner: Achieving Accurate Long Rollouts with Neural PDE Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05732/) (2023)
- [Towards Multi-spatiotemporal-scale Generalized PDE Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15616/) (2022)
- [Forecasting Global Weather with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.07575/) (2022)
- [Large Models for Time Series and Spatio-Temporal Data: A Survey and Outlook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10196/) (2023)
- [Scaling transformer neural networks for skillful and reliable medium-range weather forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03876/) (2023)
- [Clifford Neural Layers for PDE Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04934/) (2022)
- [Sub-seasonal forecasting with a large ensemble of deep-learning weather prediction models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.05107/) (2021)
- [When Physics Meets Machine Learning: A Survey of Physics-Informed Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16797/) (2022)
- [Towards Stability of Autoregressive Neural Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10619/) (2023)
- [ACE: A fast, skillful learned global atmospheric model for climate prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02074/) (2023)
- [ACE2: Accurately learning subseasonal to decadal atmospheric variability and forced responses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11268/) (2024)
- [Evaluation of post-hoc interpretability methods in time-series classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05656/) (2022)
- [ClimateLearn: Benchmarking Machine Learning for Weather and Climate Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01909/) (2023)
- [Learning Dissipative Dynamics in Chaotic Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06898/) (2021)
- [Will Artificial Intelligence supersede Earth System and Climate Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.09126/) (2021)
- [EarthNet2021: A large-scale dataset and challenge for Earth surface forecasting as a guided video prediction task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10066/) (2021)
- [Physics-informed neural networks for the shallow-water equations on the sphere](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00615/) (2021)
- [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)
- [RecShard: Statistical Feature-Based Memory Optimization for Industry-Scale Neural Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10095/) (2022)
- [Advancing Parsimonious Deep Learning Weather Prediction using the HEALPix Mesh](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06253/) (2023)
- [Fixing the Double Penalty in Data-Driven Weather Forecasting Through a Modified Spherical Harmonic Loss Function](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.19374/) (2025)
- [A Practical Probabilistic Benchmark for AI Weather Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15305/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a significantly-improved data-driven global weather forecasting framework using a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to forecast several basic atmospheric variables on a global grid. New developments in this framework include an offline volume-conservative mapping to a cubed-sphere grid, improvements to the CNN architecture, and the minimization of the loss function over multiple steps in a prediction sequence. The cubed-sphere remapping minimizes the distortion on the cube faces on which convolution operations are performed and provides natural boundary conditions for padding in the CNN. Our improved model produces weather forecasts that are indefinitely stable and produce realistic weather patterns at lead times of several weeks and longer. For short- to medium-range forecasting, our model significantly outperforms persistence, climatology, and a coarse-resolution dynamical numerical weather prediction (NWP) model. Unsurprisingly, our forecasts are worse than those from a high-resolution state-of-the-art operational NWP system. Our data-driven model is able to learn to forecast complex surface temperature patterns from few input atmospheric state variables. On annual time scales, our model produces a realistic seasonal cycle driven solely by the prescribed variation in top-of-atmosphere solar forcing. Although it is currently less accurate than operational weather forecasting models, our data-driven CNN executes much faster than those models, suggesting that machine learning could prove to be a valuable tool for large-ensemble forecasting.