Jeremy Berman

h-index6
2papers

2 Papers

6.3LGApr 17
Enhancing AI and Dynamical Subseasonal Forecasts with Probabilistic Bias Correction

Hannah Guan, Soukayna Mouatadid, Paulo Orenstein et al.

Decision-makers rely on weather forecasts to plant crops, manage wildfires, allocate water and energy, and prepare for weather extremes. Today, such forecasts enjoy unprecedented accuracy out to two weeks thanks to steady advances in physics-based dynamical models and data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) models. However, model skill drops precipitously at subseasonal timescales (2 - 6 weeks ahead), due to compounding errors and persistent biases. To counter this degradation, we introduce probabilistic bias correction (PBC), a machine learning framework that substantially reduces systematic error by learning to correct historical probabilistic forecasts. When applied to the leading dynamical and AI models from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), PBC doubles the subseasonal skill of the AI Forecasting System and improves the skill of the operationally-debiased dynamical model for 91% of pressure, 92% of temperature, and 98% of precipitation targets. We designed PBC for operational deployment, and, in ECMWF's 2025 real-time forecasting competition, its global forecasts placed first for all weather variables and lead times, outperforming the dynamical models from six operational forecasting centers, an international dynamical multi-model ensemble, ECMWF's AI Forecasting System, and the forecasting systems of 34 teams worldwide. These probabilistic skill gains translate into more accurate prediction of extreme events and have the potential to improve agricultural planning, energy management, and disaster preparedness in vulnerable communities.

AO-PHMar 22, 2024
An ensemble of data-driven weather prediction models for operational sub-seasonal forecasting

Jonathan A. Weyn, Divya Kumar, Jeremy Berman et al.

We present an operations-ready multi-model ensemble weather forecasting system which uses hybrid data-driven weather prediction models coupled with the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ocean model to predict global weather at 1-degree resolution for 4 weeks of lead time. For predictions of 2-meter temperature, our ensemble on average outperforms the raw ECMWF extended-range ensemble by 4-17%, depending on the lead time. However, after applying statistical bias corrections, the ECMWF ensemble is about 3% better at 4 weeks. For other surface parameters, our ensemble is also within a few percentage points of ECMWF's ensemble. We demonstrate that it is possible to achieve near-state-of-the-art subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasts using a multi-model ensembling approach with data-driven weather prediction models.