Principled Operator Learning in Ocean Dynamics: The Role of Temporal Structure

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Jahanmard, Vahidreza, Ramezani-Kebrya, Ali, Hordoir, Robinson
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Jahanmard, Vahidreza
Ramezani-Kebrya, Ali
Hordoir, Robinson
author_facet Jahanmard, Vahidreza
Ramezani-Kebrya, Ali
Hordoir, Robinson
contents Neural operators are becoming the default tools to learn solutions to governing partial differential equations (PDEs) in weather and ocean forecasting applications. Despite early promising achievements, significant challenges remain, including long-term prediction stability and adherence to physical laws, particularly for high-frequency processes. In this paper, we take a step toward addressing these challenges in high-resolution ocean prediction by incorporating temporal Fourier modes, demonstrating how this modification enhances physical fidelity. This study compares the standard Fourier Neural Operator (FNO) with its variant, FNOtD, which has been modified to internalize the dispersion relation while learning the solution operator for ocean PDEs. The results demonstrate that entangling space and time in the training of integral kernels enables the model to capture multiscale wave propagation and effectively learn ocean dynamics. FNOtD substantially improves long-term prediction stability and consistency with underlying physical dynamics in challenging high-frequency settings compared to the standard FNO. It also provides competitive predictive skill relative to a state-of-the-art numerical ocean model, while requiring significantly lower computational cost.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_09792
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Principled Operator Learning in Ocean Dynamics: The Role of Temporal Structure
Jahanmard, Vahidreza
Ramezani-Kebrya, Ali
Hordoir, Robinson
Machine Learning
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Neural operators are becoming the default tools to learn solutions to governing partial differential equations (PDEs) in weather and ocean forecasting applications. Despite early promising achievements, significant challenges remain, including long-term prediction stability and adherence to physical laws, particularly for high-frequency processes. In this paper, we take a step toward addressing these challenges in high-resolution ocean prediction by incorporating temporal Fourier modes, demonstrating how this modification enhances physical fidelity. This study compares the standard Fourier Neural Operator (FNO) with its variant, FNOtD, which has been modified to internalize the dispersion relation while learning the solution operator for ocean PDEs. The results demonstrate that entangling space and time in the training of integral kernels enables the model to capture multiscale wave propagation and effectively learn ocean dynamics. FNOtD substantially improves long-term prediction stability and consistency with underlying physical dynamics in challenging high-frequency settings compared to the standard FNO. It also provides competitive predictive skill relative to a state-of-the-art numerical ocean model, while requiring significantly lower computational cost.
title Principled Operator Learning in Ocean Dynamics: The Role of Temporal Structure
topic Machine Learning
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09792