ML4WX

Hybrid physics-ML & parameterization

WRF–ML v1.0: a bridge between WRF v4.3 and machine learning parameterizations and its application to atmospheric radiative transfer

Xiaohui Zhong, Zhijian Ma, Yichen Yao, Lifei Xu, Wu Yuan, Zhibin Wang

Geoscientific model development · · Alibaba (DAMO Academy)

PaperPDF

In one sentence. WRF-ML coupler lets Python deep learning parameterizations run inside the Fortran WRF model, demonstrated with trained DL radiation emulators coupled to WRF.

Abstract

Abstract. In numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, physical parameterization schemes are the most computationally expensive components, despite being greatly simplified. In the past few years, an increasing number of studies have demonstrated that deep learning (DL) parameterizations of subgrid physics have the potential to accelerate and even outperform conventional physic-based schemes. However, as the DL models are commonly implemented using the DL libraries written in Python, very few DL-based parameterizations have been successfully integrated with NWP models due to the difficulty of embedding Python functions into Fortran-based NWP models. To address this issue, we developed a coupler to allow the DL-based parameterizations to be coupled with a widely used NWP model, i.e., the Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) model. Similar to the WRF I/O methodologies, the coupler provides the options to run the DL model inference with exclusive processors or the same processors for WRF calculations. In addition, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the coupler, the DL-based radiation emulators are trained and coupled with the WRF model successfully.

Labels

Topic
Hybrid physics-ML & parameterization, Software, scaling & compression
Type
New model or method
Method
CNN / U-Net
Domain
Regional
Data
km-scale or high-res simulation, Other
Status
Pre-operational / experimental
Identifiers
DOI:10.5194/gmd-16-199-2023 OpenAlex:W4313641022
Added
2026-10-22

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