Cited by 497Meteorological Phenomena and SimulationsClimate variability and modelsAtmospheric aerosols and clouds

Could Machine Learning Break the Convection Parameterization Deadlock?

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Gentine, P., Pritchard, M., Rasp, S., Reinaudi, G., Yacalis, G.·2018·Geophysical Research Letters

Abstract

Representing unresolved moist convection in coarse‐scale climate models remains one of the main bottlenecks of current climate simulations. Many of the biases present with parameterized convection are strongly reduced when convection is explicitly resolved (i.e., in cloud resolving models at high spatial resolution approximately a kilometer or so). We here present a novel approach to convective parameterization based on machine learning, using an aquaplanet with prescribed sea surface temperatures as a proof of concept. A deep neural network is trained with a superparameterized version of a climate model in which convection is resolved by thousands of embedded 2‐D cloud resolving models. The machine learning representation of convection, which we call the Cloud Brain (CBRAIN), can skillfully predict many of the convective heating, moistening, and radiative features of superparameterization that are most important to climate simulation, although an unintended side effect is to reduce some of the superparameterization's inherent variance. Since as few as three months' high‐frequency global training data prove sufficient to provide this skill, the approach presented here opens up a new possibility for a future class of convection parameterizations in climate models that are built “top‐down,” that is, by learning salient features of convection from unusually explicit simulations.

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  • Gentine et al. trained a deep neural network to emulate the behavior of a high-resolution cloud simulation, and found that the network gave similar results for a fraction of the cost and was stable in a simplified global model.

    “Gentine et al. trained a deep neural network to emulate the behavior of a high-resolution cloud simulation, and found that the network gave similar results for a fraction of the cost [275] and was stable in a simplified global model [670].”

    From Tackling climate change with machine learning (2023) · cites this paper as [275]

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Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Khairoutdinov, M. F., & Randall, D. A. (2003). Cloud resolving modeling of the ARM summer 1997 IOP: Model formulation, results, uncer- tainties, and sensitivities. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 60(4), 607-625.
  2. Kingma, D. P., & Ba, J. (2014). Adam: A method for stochastic optimization, arXiv, cs. LG.

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Authors
Gentine, P., Pritchard, M., Rasp, S., Reinaudi, G., & Yacalis, G.
Affiliations
  • Columbia University (US)
  • University of California, Irvine (US)
  • Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
Corresponding author
Gentine, P.
Venue
Geophysical Research Letters
Published
2018-06-12
Volume
45
Issue
11
Pages
5742-5751
ISSN
  • 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
  • 1944-8007
OpenAlex
W2804943168
Cited by
497
References
79
Citations by year
2026: 40 · 2025: 63 · 2024: 69 · 2023: 67 · 2022: 79 · 2021: 91 · 2020: 53 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 10
FWCI
21.93
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • National Science Foundation (1552304, 1649770, TG‐ATM120034, AGS‐1734164)
  • U.S. Department of Energy (DE‐SC00‐12548, DE‐SC0012152)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Atmospheric aerosols and clouds
Keywords
convection parameterization, machine learning, deep neural network, superparameterization, cloud-resolving model, aquaplanet, convective heating, climate model bias

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