Towards NoahMP-AI: Enhancing Land Surface Model Prediction with Deep Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Mbarak, Mahmoud, Singh, Manmeet, Sudharsan, Naveen, Yang, Zong-Liang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Mbarak, Mahmoud
Singh, Manmeet
Sudharsan, Naveen
Yang, Zong-Liang
author_facet Mbarak, Mahmoud
Singh, Manmeet
Sudharsan, Naveen
Yang, Zong-Liang
contents Accurate soil moisture prediction during extreme events remains a critical challenge for earth system modeling, with profound implications for drought monitoring, flood forecasting, and climate adaptation strategies. While land surface models (LSMs) provide physically-based predictions, they exhibit systematic biases during extreme conditions when their parameterizations operate outside calibrated ranges. Here we present NoahMP-AI, a physics-guided deep learning framework that addresses this challenge by leveraging the complete Noah-MP land surface model as a comprehensive physics-based feature generator while using machine learning to correct structural limitations against satellite observations. We employ a 3D U-Net architecture that processes Noah-MP outputs (soil moisture, latent heat flux, and sensible heat flux) to predict SMAP soil moisture across two contrasting extreme events: a prolonged drought (March-September 2022) and Hurricane Beryl (July 2024) over Texas. When comparing NoahMP-AI with NoahMP, our results demonstrate an increase in R-squared values from -0.7 to 0.5 during drought conditions, while maintaining physical consistency and spatial coherence. The framework's ability to preserve Noah-MP's physical relationships while learning observation-based corrections represents a significant advance in hybrid earth system modeling. This work establishes both a practical tool for operational forecasting and a benchmark for investigating the optimal integration of physics-based understanding with data-driven learning in environmental prediction systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_12919
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards NoahMP-AI: Enhancing Land Surface Model Prediction with Deep Learning
Mbarak, Mahmoud
Singh, Manmeet
Sudharsan, Naveen
Yang, Zong-Liang
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Accurate soil moisture prediction during extreme events remains a critical challenge for earth system modeling, with profound implications for drought monitoring, flood forecasting, and climate adaptation strategies. While land surface models (LSMs) provide physically-based predictions, they exhibit systematic biases during extreme conditions when their parameterizations operate outside calibrated ranges. Here we present NoahMP-AI, a physics-guided deep learning framework that addresses this challenge by leveraging the complete Noah-MP land surface model as a comprehensive physics-based feature generator while using machine learning to correct structural limitations against satellite observations. We employ a 3D U-Net architecture that processes Noah-MP outputs (soil moisture, latent heat flux, and sensible heat flux) to predict SMAP soil moisture across two contrasting extreme events: a prolonged drought (March-September 2022) and Hurricane Beryl (July 2024) over Texas. When comparing NoahMP-AI with NoahMP, our results demonstrate an increase in R-squared values from -0.7 to 0.5 during drought conditions, while maintaining physical consistency and spatial coherence. The framework's ability to preserve Noah-MP's physical relationships while learning observation-based corrections represents a significant advance in hybrid earth system modeling. This work establishes both a practical tool for operational forecasting and a benchmark for investigating the optimal integration of physics-based understanding with data-driven learning in environmental prediction systems.
title Towards NoahMP-AI: Enhancing Land Surface Model Prediction with Deep Learning
topic Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12919