# WeatherMesh-3: Fast and accurate operational global weather forecasting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.22235 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22235/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [Shampoo: Preconditioned Stochastic Tensor Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09568/) (2018)
- [Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05433/) (2019)
- [FuXi: A cascade machine learning forecasting system for 15-day global weather forecast](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.12873/) (2023)
- [WeatherBench 2: A benchmark for the next generation of data-driven global weather models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15560/) (2023)
- [FourCastNet: Accelerating Global High-Resolution Weather Forecasting using Adaptive Fourier Neural Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05419/) (2022)
- [GenCast: Diffusion-based ensemble forecasting for medium-range weather](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15796/) (2023)
- [A Distributed Data-Parallel PyTorch Implementation of the Distributed Shampoo Optimizer for Training Neural Networks At-Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06497/) (2023)
- [Faster Neighborhood Attention: Reducing the O(n^2) Cost of Self Attention at the Threadblock Level](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04690/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Generalized Neighborhood Attention: Multi-dimensional Sparse Attention at the Speed of Light](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16922/) (2025)
- [ARROW: An Adaptive Rollout and Routing Method for Global Weather Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09734/) (2025)
- [EPT-2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09703/) (2025)
- [SoftSEEPS improves ML-based precipitation forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.09752/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present WeatherMesh-3 (WM-3), an operational transformer-based global weather forecasting system that improves the state of the art in both accuracy and computational efficiency. We introduce the following advances: 1) a latent rollout that enables arbitrary-length predictions in latent space without intermediate encoding or decoding; and 2) a modular architecture that flexibly utilizes mixed-horizon processors and encodes multiple real-time analyses to create blended initial conditions. WM-3 generates 14-day global forecasts at 0.25-degree resolution in 12 seconds on a single RTX 4090. This represents a >100,000-fold speedup over traditional NWP approaches while achieving superior accuracy with up to 37.7% improvement in RMSE over operational models, requiring only a single consumer-grade GPU for deployment. We aim for WM-3 to democratize weather forecasting by providing an accessible, lightweight model for operational use while pushing the performance boundaries of machine learning-based weather prediction.