# SRViT: Vision Transformers for Estimating Radar Reflectivity from Satellite Observations at Scale

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.16955 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16955/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jun 2024.

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

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [What Does BERT Look At? An Analysis of BERT's Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04341/) (2019)
- [FourCastNet: A Global Data-driven High-resolution Weather Model using Adaptive Fourier Neural Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11214/) (2022)
- [Attention is not not Explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.04626/) (2019)
- [Transformer Interpretability Beyond Attention Visualization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09838/) (2020)
- [Is Attention Interpretable?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.03731/) (2019)
- [Skillful Precipitation Nowcasting using Deep Generative Models of Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00954/) (2021)
- [Revealing the Dark Secrets of BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.08593/) (2019)
- [GraphCast: Learning skillful medium-range global weather forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.12794/) (2022)
- [FengWu: Pushing the Skillful Global Medium-range Weather Forecast beyond 10 Days Lead](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02948/) (2023)
- [Pangu-Weather: A 3D High-Resolution Model for Fast and Accurate Global Weather Forecast](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02556/) (2022)
- [Self-Attention Attribution: Interpreting Information Interactions Inside Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11207/) (2020)
- [On Identifiability in Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.04211/) (2019)
- [Residual Corrective Diffusion Modeling for Km-scale Atmospheric Downscaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15214/) (2023)
- [How Important Is a Neuron?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.12233/) (2018)
- [Development and Interpretation of a Neural Network-Based Synthetic Radar Reflectivity Estimator Using GOES-R Satellite Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07906/) (2020)
- [The Need for Ethical, Responsible, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Sciences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08453/) (2021)
- [DiffObs: Generative Diffusion for Global Forecasting of Satellite Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06517/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [OmniEarth-Bench: Towards Holistic Evaluation of Earth's Six Spheres and Cross-Spheres Interactions with Multimodal Observational Earth Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23522/) (2025)
- [WeatherGFM: Learning A Weather Generalist Foundation Model via In-context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.05420/) (2024)
- [RadarQA: Multi-modal Quality Analysis of Weather Radar Forecasts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12291/) (2025)
- [DiffSR: Learning Radar Reflectivity Synthesis via Diffusion Model from Satellite Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.06714/) (2024)
- [RainPro-8: An Efficient Deep Learning Model to Estimate Rainfall Probabilities Over 8 Hours](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10271/) (2025)
- [SynWeather: Weather Observation Data Synthesis across Multiple Regions and Variables via a General Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08291/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce a transformer-based neural network to generate high-resolution (3km) synthetic radar reflectivity fields at scale from geostationary satellite imagery. This work aims to enhance short-term convective-scale forecasts of high-impact weather events and aid in data assimilation for numerical weather prediction over the United States. Compared to convolutional approaches, which have limited receptive fields, our results show improved sharpness and higher accuracy across various composite reflectivity thresholds. Additional case studies over specific atmospheric phenomena support our quantitative findings, while a novel attribution method is introduced to guide domain experts in understanding model outputs.