Using data assimilation tools to dissect GraphDOP

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Laloyaux, Patrick, Alexe, Mihai, Boucher, Eulalie, Lean, Peter, Pinnington, Ewan, Lang, Simon, Necker, Tobias, McNally, Anthony
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Laloyaux, Patrick
Alexe, Mihai
Boucher, Eulalie
Lean, Peter
Pinnington, Ewan
Lang, Simon
Necker, Tobias
McNally, Anthony
author_facet Laloyaux, Patrick
Alexe, Mihai
Boucher, Eulalie
Lean, Peter
Pinnington, Ewan
Lang, Simon
Necker, Tobias
McNally, Anthony
contents The Data Assimilation (DA) community has been developing various diagnostics to understand the importance of the observing system in accurately forecasting the weather. They usually rely on the ability to compute the derivatives of the physical model output with respect to its initial condition. For example, the Forecast Sensitivity-based Observation Impact (FSOI) estimates the impact on the forecast error of each observation processed in the DA system. This paper presents how these DA diagnostic tools are transferred to Machine Learning (ML) models, as their derivatives are readily available through automatic differentiation. We specifically explore the interpretability and explainability of the observation-driven GraphDOP model developed at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The interpretability study demonstrates the effectiveness of GraphDOP's sliding attention window to learn the meteorological features present in the observation datasets and to learn the spatial relationships between different regions. Making these relationships more transparent confirms that GraphDOP captures real, physically meaningful processes, such as the movement of storm systems. The explainability of GraphDOP is explored by applying the FSOI tool to study the impact of the different observations on the forecast error. This inspection reveals that GraphDOP creates an internal representation of the Earth system by combining the information from conventional and satellite observations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_27388
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Using data assimilation tools to dissect GraphDOP
Laloyaux, Patrick
Alexe, Mihai
Boucher, Eulalie
Lean, Peter
Pinnington, Ewan
Lang, Simon
Necker, Tobias
McNally, Anthony
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
The Data Assimilation (DA) community has been developing various diagnostics to understand the importance of the observing system in accurately forecasting the weather. They usually rely on the ability to compute the derivatives of the physical model output with respect to its initial condition. For example, the Forecast Sensitivity-based Observation Impact (FSOI) estimates the impact on the forecast error of each observation processed in the DA system. This paper presents how these DA diagnostic tools are transferred to Machine Learning (ML) models, as their derivatives are readily available through automatic differentiation. We specifically explore the interpretability and explainability of the observation-driven GraphDOP model developed at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The interpretability study demonstrates the effectiveness of GraphDOP's sliding attention window to learn the meteorological features present in the observation datasets and to learn the spatial relationships between different regions. Making these relationships more transparent confirms that GraphDOP captures real, physically meaningful processes, such as the movement of storm systems. The explainability of GraphDOP is explored by applying the FSOI tool to study the impact of the different observations on the forecast error. This inspection reveals that GraphDOP creates an internal representation of the Earth system by combining the information from conventional and satellite observations.
title Using data assimilation tools to dissect GraphDOP
topic Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.27388