# Accurate Precipitation Forecast by Efficiently Learning from Massive Atmospheric Variables and Unbalanced Distribution

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.26108 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26108/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Mar 2026.

## 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)
- [Axiomatic Attribution for Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01365/) (2017)
- [Convolutional LSTM Network: A Machine Learning Approach for Precipitation Nowcasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.04214/) (2015)
- [FourCastNet: A Global Data-driven High-resolution Weather Model using Adaptive Fourier Neural Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11214/) (2022)
- [Skillful Precipitation Nowcasting using Deep Generative Models of Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00954/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Earthformer: Exploring Space-Time Transformers for Earth System Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05833/) (2022)
- [Delving Deeper into Convolutional Networks for Learning Video Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06432/) (2015)
- [MetNet: A Neural Weather Model for Precipitation Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12140/) (2020)
- [PreDiff: Precipitation Nowcasting with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10422/) (2023)
- [Deep Learning for Day Forecasts from Sparse Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06079/) (2023)
- [SmaAt-UNet: Precipitation Nowcasting using a Small Attention-UNet Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.04417/) (2020)
- [Machine Learning for Precipitation Nowcasting from Radar Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.12132/) (2019)
- [FuXi-Extreme: Improving extreme rainfall and wind forecasts with diffusion model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.19822/) (2023)
- [A review of radar-based nowcasting of precipitation and applicable machine learning techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04988/) (2020)
- [MIMO Is All You Need : A Strong Multi-In-Multi-Out Baseline for Video Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04655/) (2022)
- [High-Dynamic Radar Sequence Prediction for Weather Nowcasting Using Spatiotemporal Coherent Gaussian Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14895/) (2025)
- [Efficiently improving key weather variables forecasting by performing the guided iterative prediction in latent space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19187/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Short-term (0-24 hours) precipitation forecasting is highly valuable to socioeconomic activities and public safety. However, the highly complex evolution patterns of precipitation events, the extreme imbalance between precipitation and non-precipitation samples, and the inability of existing models to efficiently and effectively utilize large volumes of multi-source atmospheric observation data hinder improvements in precipitation forecasting accuracy and computational efficiency. To address the above challenges, this study developed a novel forecasting model capable of effectively and efficiently utilizing massive atmospheric observations by automatically extracting and iteratively predicting the latent features strongly associated with precipitation evolution. Furthermore, this study introduces a 'WMCE' loss function, designed to accurately discriminate extremely scarce precipitation events while precisely predicting their intensity values. Extensive experiments on two datasets demonstrate that our proposed model substantially and consistently outperforms all prevalent baselines in both accuracy and efficiency. Moreover, the proposed forecasting model substantially lowers the computational cost required to obtain valuable predictions compared to existing approaches, thereby positioning it as a milestone for efficient and practical precipitation forecasting.