A Multi-Fidelity Tensor Emulator for Spatiotemporal Outputs: Emulation of Arctic Sea Ice Dynamics

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Main Authors: Contant, Tristan, Guan, Yawen, Wilson, Ander, Turner, Adrian K., Sulsky, Deborah
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Contant, Tristan
Guan, Yawen
Wilson, Ander
Turner, Adrian K.
Sulsky, Deborah
author_facet Contant, Tristan
Guan, Yawen
Wilson, Ander
Turner, Adrian K.
Sulsky, Deborah
contents Numerical models are widely used to simulate the earth system, but they are computationally expensive and often depend on many uncertain input parameters. Their effective use requires calibration and uncertainty quantification, which typically involve running the model across many input configurations and therefore incur substantial computational cost. Statistical emulation provides a practical alternative for efficiently exploring model behavior. We are motivated by the Arctic sea ice component of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (MPAS-Seaice), which generates large spatiotemporal outputs at multiple spatial resolutions, with high-resolution (or high-fidelity, HF) simulations being more accurate but computationally more expensive than lower-resolution (low-fidelity, LF) simulations. Multi-fidelity (MF) emulation integrates information across resolutions to construct efficient and accurate surrogate models, yet existing approaches struggle to scale to large spatiotemporal data. We develop an MF emulator that combines tensor decomposition for dimensionality reduction, Gaussian process priors for flexible function approximation, and an additive discrepancy model to capture systematic differences between LF and HF data. The proposed framework enables scalable emulation while maintaining accurate predictions and well-calibrated uncertainty for complex spatiotemporal fields, and consistently achieves lower prediction error and reduced uncertainty than LF-only and HF-only models in both simulation studies and MPAS-Seaice analysis. By leveraging the complementary strengths of LF and HF data and using an efficient tensor decomposition approach, our emulator greatly reduces computational expense, making it well suited for large-scale simulation tasks involving complex physical models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_04697
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Multi-Fidelity Tensor Emulator for Spatiotemporal Outputs: Emulation of Arctic Sea Ice Dynamics
Contant, Tristan
Guan, Yawen
Wilson, Ander
Turner, Adrian K.
Sulsky, Deborah
Methodology
Numerical models are widely used to simulate the earth system, but they are computationally expensive and often depend on many uncertain input parameters. Their effective use requires calibration and uncertainty quantification, which typically involve running the model across many input configurations and therefore incur substantial computational cost. Statistical emulation provides a practical alternative for efficiently exploring model behavior. We are motivated by the Arctic sea ice component of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (MPAS-Seaice), which generates large spatiotemporal outputs at multiple spatial resolutions, with high-resolution (or high-fidelity, HF) simulations being more accurate but computationally more expensive than lower-resolution (low-fidelity, LF) simulations. Multi-fidelity (MF) emulation integrates information across resolutions to construct efficient and accurate surrogate models, yet existing approaches struggle to scale to large spatiotemporal data. We develop an MF emulator that combines tensor decomposition for dimensionality reduction, Gaussian process priors for flexible function approximation, and an additive discrepancy model to capture systematic differences between LF and HF data. The proposed framework enables scalable emulation while maintaining accurate predictions and well-calibrated uncertainty for complex spatiotemporal fields, and consistently achieves lower prediction error and reduced uncertainty than LF-only and HF-only models in both simulation studies and MPAS-Seaice analysis. By leveraging the complementary strengths of LF and HF data and using an efficient tensor decomposition approach, our emulator greatly reduces computational expense, making it well suited for large-scale simulation tasks involving complex physical models.
title A Multi-Fidelity Tensor Emulator for Spatiotemporal Outputs: Emulation of Arctic Sea Ice Dynamics
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.04697