Hybrid physics-ML & parameterization★ Highlight
Accelerating Radiation Computations for Dynamical Models With Targeted Machine Learning and Code Optimization
Why it matters. NN gas optics for RRTMGP with code optimization gives 2-3x radiation speedup at near-original accuracy; practical for ECMWF-style models.
In one sentence. Neural networks replace gas optics in the RRTMGP radiation scheme, running 1–6 times faster with heating-rate errors below 0.1 K/day, giving 3.5x faster longwave fluxes.
Abstract
Abstract Atmospheric radiation is the main driver of weather and climate, yet due to a complicated absorption spectrum, the precise treatment of radiative transfer in numerical weather and climate models is computationally unfeasible. Radiation parameterizations need to maximize computational efficiency as well as accuracy, and for predicting the future climate many greenhouse gases need to be included. In this work, neural networks (NNs) were developed to replace the gas optics computations in a modern radiation scheme (RTE+RRTMGP) by using carefully constructed models and training data. The NNs, implemented in Fortran and utilizing BLAS for batched inference, are faster by a factor of 1–6, depending on the software and hardware platforms. We combined the accelerated gas optics with a refactored radiative transfer solver, resulting in clear‐sky longwave (shortwave) fluxes being 3.5 (1.8) faster to compute on an Intel platform. The accuracy, evaluated with benchmark line‐by‐line computations across a large range of atmospheric conditions, is very similar to the original scheme with errors in heating rates and top‐of‐atmosphere radiative forcings typically below 0.1 K day−1 and 0.5 W m−2, respectively. These results show that targeted machine learning, code restructuring techniques, and the use of numerical libraries can yield material gains in efficiency while retaining accuracy.
Labels
- Topic
- Hybrid physics-ML & parameterization
- Type
- New model or method
- Method
- Other
- Domain
- Global
- Data
- Other
- Status
- Research
- Identifiers
- DOI:10.1029/2020ms002226 OpenAlex:W3100028353
- Added
- 2026-10-22
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