# ACE Metric: Advection and Convection Evaluation for Accurate Weather Forecasting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.04678 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04678/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Convolutional LSTM Network: A Machine Learning Approach for Precipitation Nowcasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.04214/) (2015)
- [Towards Accurate Generative Models of Video: A New Metric & Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01717/) (2018)
- [FourCastNet: A Global Data-driven High-resolution Weather Model using Adaptive Fourier Neural Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11214/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Video Representations using LSTMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.04681/) (2015)
- [Skillful Precipitation Nowcasting using Deep Generative Models of Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00954/) (2021)
- [WeatherBench: A benchmark dataset for data-driven weather forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00469/) (2020)
- [GraphCast: Learning skillful medium-range global weather forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.12794/) (2022)
- [Adaptive Fourier Neural Operators: Efficient Token Mixers for Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13587/) (2021)
- [WeatherBench 2: A benchmark for the next generation of data-driven global weather models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15560/) (2023)
- [Deep Predictive Coding Networks for Video Prediction and Unsupervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.08104/) (2016)
- [Disentangling Physical Dynamics from Unknown Factors for Unsupervised Video Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01460/) (2020)
- [SimVP: Simpler yet Better Video Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.05099/) (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)
- [Memory In Memory: A Predictive Neural Network for Learning Higher-Order Non-Stationarity from Spatiotemporal Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.07490/) (2018)
- [Temporal Attention Unit: Towards Efficient Spatiotemporal Predictive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.12126/) (2022)
- [Deep Learning for Day Forecasts from Sparse Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06079/) (2023)
- [Domain Generalization Strategy to Train Classifiers Robust to Spatial-Temporal Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02968/) (2022)
- [Long-Term Typhoon Trajectory Prediction: A Physics-Conditioned Approach Without Reanalysis Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15726/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [RainODE: Continuous-Time Precipitation Forecasting with Latent Neural ODEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29855/) (2026)
- [Breaking the Statistical Similarity Trap in Extreme Convection Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09195/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, data-driven weather forecasting methods have received significant attention for surpassing the RMSE performance of traditional NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction)-based methods. However, data-driven models are tuned to minimize the loss between forecasted data and ground truths, often using pixel-wise loss. This can lead to models that produce blurred outputs, which, despite being significantly different in detail from the actual weather conditions, still demonstrate low RMSE values. Although evaluation metrics from the computer vision field, such as PSNR, SSIM, and FVD, can be used, they are not entirely suitable for weather variables. This is because weather variables exhibit continuous physical changes over time and lack the distinct boundaries of objects typically seen in computer vision images. To resolve these issues, we propose the advection and convection Error (ACE) metric, specifically designed to assess how well models predict advection and convection, which are significant atmospheric transfer methods. We have validated the ACE evaluation metric on the WeatherBench2 and MovingMNIST datasets.