Advancing global sea ice prediction capabilities using a fully-coupled climate model with integrated machine learning
arXiv:2505.18328 · doi:10.1126/sciadv.ady8957
Abstract
We showcase a hybrid modeling framework which embeds machine learning (ML) inference into the GFDL SPEAR climate model, for online sea ice bias correction during a set of global fully-coupled 1-year retrospective forecasts. We compare two hybrid versions of SPEAR to understand the importance of exposing ML models to coupled ice-atmosphere-ocean feedbacks before implementation into fully-coupled simulations: Hybrid_CPL (with feedbacks) and Hybrid_IO (without feedbacks). Relative to SPEAR, Hybrid_CPL systematically reduces seasonal forecast errors in the Arctic and significantly reduces Antarctic errors for target months May-December, with >2x error reduction in 4-6-month lead forecasts of Antarctic winter sea ice extent. Meanwhile, Hybrid_IO suffers from out-of-sample behavior which can trigger a chain of Southern Ocean feedbacks, leading to ice-free Antarctic summers. Our results demonstrate that ML can significantly improve numerical sea ice prediction capabilities and that exposing ML models to coupled ice-atmosphere-ocean processes is essential for generalization in fully-coupled simulations.
32 pages, 6 figures
References in corpus (5)
- Explaining the physics of transfer learning a data-driven subgrid-scale closure to a different turbulent flow
- Deep learning of systematic sea ice model errors from data assimilation increments
- Parameterizing Vertical Mixing Coefficients in the Ocean Surface Boundary Layer using Neural Networks
- Machine learning for online sea ice bias correction within global ice-ocean simulations
- A stable implementation of a data-driven scale-aware mesoscale parameterization