Improving Predictions of Convective Storm Wind Gusts through Statistical Post-Processing of Neural Weather Models

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Main Authors: Leclerc, Antoine, Koch, Erwan, Feldmann, Monika, Nerini, Daniele, Beucler, Tom
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Leclerc, Antoine
Koch, Erwan
Feldmann, Monika
Nerini, Daniele
Beucler, Tom
author_facet Leclerc, Antoine
Koch, Erwan
Feldmann, Monika
Nerini, Daniele
Beucler, Tom
contents Issuing timely severe weather warnings helps mitigate potentially disastrous consequences. Recent advancements in Neural Weather Models (NWMs) offer a computationally inexpensive and fast approach for forecasting atmospheric environments on a 0.25° global grid. For thunderstorms, these environments can be empirically post-processed to predict wind gust distributions at specific locations. With the Pangu-Weather NWM, we apply a hierarchy of statistical and deep learning post-processing methods to forecast hourly wind gusts up to three days ahead. To ensure statistical robustness, we constrain our probabilistic forecasts using generalised extreme-value distributions across five regions in Switzerland. Using a convolutional neural network to post-process the predicted atmospheric environment's spatial patterns yields the best results, outperforming direct forecasting approaches across lead times and wind gust speeds. Our results confirm the added value of NWMs for extreme wind forecasting, especially for designing more responsive early-warning systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_00128
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Improving Predictions of Convective Storm Wind Gusts through Statistical Post-Processing of Neural Weather Models
Leclerc, Antoine
Koch, Erwan
Feldmann, Monika
Nerini, Daniele
Beucler, Tom
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Machine Learning
Issuing timely severe weather warnings helps mitigate potentially disastrous consequences. Recent advancements in Neural Weather Models (NWMs) offer a computationally inexpensive and fast approach for forecasting atmospheric environments on a 0.25° global grid. For thunderstorms, these environments can be empirically post-processed to predict wind gust distributions at specific locations. With the Pangu-Weather NWM, we apply a hierarchy of statistical and deep learning post-processing methods to forecast hourly wind gusts up to three days ahead. To ensure statistical robustness, we constrain our probabilistic forecasts using generalised extreme-value distributions across five regions in Switzerland. Using a convolutional neural network to post-process the predicted atmospheric environment's spatial patterns yields the best results, outperforming direct forecasting approaches across lead times and wind gust speeds. Our results confirm the added value of NWMs for extreme wind forecasting, especially for designing more responsive early-warning systems.
title Improving Predictions of Convective Storm Wind Gusts through Statistical Post-Processing of Neural Weather Models
topic Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.00128