Benchmarking Regional Thermodynamic Trends in an AI emulator, ACE2, and a hybrid model, NeuralGCM

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Main Authors: Rucker, Katharine, Baxter, Ian, Hassanzadeh, Pedram, Shaw, Tiffany A., Pahlavan, Hamid A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Rucker, Katharine
Baxter, Ian
Hassanzadeh, Pedram
Shaw, Tiffany A.
Pahlavan, Hamid A.
author_facet Rucker, Katharine
Baxter, Ian
Hassanzadeh, Pedram
Shaw, Tiffany A.
Pahlavan, Hamid A.
contents AI models have emerged as potential complements to physics-based models, but their skill in capturing observed regional climate trends with important societal impacts has not been explored. Here, we benchmark satellite-era regional thermodynamic trends, including extremes, in an AI emulator (ACE2) and a hybrid model (NeuralGCM). We also compare the AI models' skill to physics-based land-atmosphere models. Both AI models show skill in capturing regional temperature trends such as Arctic Amplification. ACE2 outperforms other models in capturing vertical temperature trends in the midlatitudes. However, the AI models do not capture regional trends in heat extremes over the US Southwest. Furthermore, they do not capture drying trends in arid regions, even though they generally perform better than physics-based models. Our results also show that a data-driven AI emulator can perform comparably to, or better than, hybrid and physics-based models in capturing regional thermodynamic trends.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_00274
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Benchmarking Regional Thermodynamic Trends in an AI emulator, ACE2, and a hybrid model, NeuralGCM
Rucker, Katharine
Baxter, Ian
Hassanzadeh, Pedram
Shaw, Tiffany A.
Pahlavan, Hamid A.
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
AI models have emerged as potential complements to physics-based models, but their skill in capturing observed regional climate trends with important societal impacts has not been explored. Here, we benchmark satellite-era regional thermodynamic trends, including extremes, in an AI emulator (ACE2) and a hybrid model (NeuralGCM). We also compare the AI models' skill to physics-based land-atmosphere models. Both AI models show skill in capturing regional temperature trends such as Arctic Amplification. ACE2 outperforms other models in capturing vertical temperature trends in the midlatitudes. However, the AI models do not capture regional trends in heat extremes over the US Southwest. Furthermore, they do not capture drying trends in arid regions, even though they generally perform better than physics-based models. Our results also show that a data-driven AI emulator can perform comparably to, or better than, hybrid and physics-based models in capturing regional thermodynamic trends.
title Benchmarking Regional Thermodynamic Trends in an AI emulator, ACE2, and a hybrid model, NeuralGCM
topic Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00274