Data-driven ensemble prediction of the global ocean
This addresses the challenge of efficient probabilistic ocean forecasting for climate risk assessment, representing a strong domain-specific advancement.
The paper tackles probabilistic global ocean forecasting by introducing FuXi-ONS, a machine-learning ensemble system that provides 5-day forecasts for ocean variables up to 365 days, improving ensemble-mean skill and probabilistic quality while running orders of magnitude faster than conventional systems.
Data-driven models have advanced deterministic ocean forecasting, but extending machine learning to probabilistic global ocean prediction remains an open challenge. Here we introduce FuXi-ONS, the first machine-learning ensemble forecasting system for the global ocean, providing 5-day forecasts on a global 1° grid up to 365 days for sea-surface temperature, sea-surface height, subsurface temperature, salinity and ocean currents. Rather than relying on repeated integration of computationally expensive numerical models, FuXi-ONS learns physically structured perturbations and incorporates an atmospheric encoding module to stabilize long-range forecasts. Evaluated against GLORYS12 reanalysis, FuXi-ONS improves both ensemble-mean skill and probabilistic forecast quality relative to deterministic and noise-perturbed baselines, and shows competitive performance against established seasonal forecast references for SST and Niño3.4 variability, while running orders of magnitude faster than conventional ensemble systems. These results provide a strong example of machine learning advancing a core problem in ocean science, and establish a practical path toward efficient probabilistic ocean forecasting and climate risk assessment.