ML4WX

Hybrid physics-ML & parameterization

A Hybrid Data‐Driven and Physics‐Based Framework for Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Modeling

Chenggong Wang, Jing Feng, Raymond Menzel, David J. Paynter, Gabriel A. Vecchi

Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems · · NOAA (incl. GFDL, PSL, GSL, NCEP/EMC), Princeton University

Paper

In one sentence. HRadNN uses a neural radiative transfer emulator by default and falls back to physics when energy is not conserved, stable under 9 K SST warming and 4-5x faster.

Abstract

Abstract Accurate and efficient radiative transfer computations are critical for numerical weather forecast and climate prediction, but current radiative transfer models are computationally expensive. We developed a neural network (NN) scheme that emulates a physics‐based radiative transfer scheme, achieving 4–5 times faster computation with high accuracy for well‐trained, targeted scenarios. However, NN models struggle with extrapolation to out‐of‐sample weather or climate conditions. To address this, we propose HRadNN, a hybrid framework that uses a NN scheme by default and switches to a physics‐based scheme whenever energy conservation is not maintained. Online simulations demonstrate HRadNN's accuracy in present‐day climate and stability in extreme warming/cooling scenarios (up to 9 K change of the sea surface temperature) even without training specific to these scenarios. This indicates that machine learning can accelerate radiative transfer computation while maintaining accuracy and efficiency, provided it is quality‐controlled by physical laws such as energy conservation.

Labels

Topic
Hybrid physics-ML & parameterization, Climate emulation
Type
New model or method
Method
Physics-informed / physics-constrained, CNN / U-Net
Domain
Global
Data
Other
Status
Research
Identifiers
DOI:10.1029/2025ms005232 OpenAlex:W7165774684
Added
2026-10-22

Labels and summary are generated by Claude and reviewed weekly. Wrong? Edit this entry.