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Application of the AI2 Climate Emulator to E3SMv2's global atmosphere model, with a focus on precipitation fidelity
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  • James PC Duncan,
  • Elynn Wu,
  • Jean-Christophe Golaz,
  • Peter Martin Caldwell,
  • Oliver Watt-Meyer,
  • Spencer Koncius Clark,
  • Jeremy McGibbon,
  • Gideon Dresdner,
  • Karthik Kashinath,
  • Boris Bonev,
  • Michael S Pritchard,
  • Christopher S. Bretherton
James PC Duncan
University of California, Berkeley

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Elynn Wu
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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Jean-Christophe Golaz
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (DOE)
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Peter Martin Caldwell
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (DOE)
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Oliver Watt-Meyer
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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Spencer Koncius Clark
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence / NOAA-GFDL
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Jeremy McGibbon
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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Gideon Dresdner
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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Karthik Kashinath
NVIDIA
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Boris Bonev
NVIDIA
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Michael S Pritchard
University of California, Irvine and NVIDIA
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Christopher S. Bretherton
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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Abstract

Can the current successes of global machine learning-based weather simulators be generalized beyond two-week forecasts to stable and accurate multiyear runs? The recently developed AI2 Climate Emulator (ACE) suggests this is feasible, based upon 10-year simulations trained on a realistic global atmosphere model using a grid spacing of approximately 110~km and forced by a repeating annual cycle of sea-surface temperature. Here we show that ACE, without modification, can be trained to emulate another major atmospheric model, EAMv2, run at a comparable grid spacing for at least ten years with similarly small climate biases. ACE accurately reproduces EAMv2’s frequency distribution of daily-mean precipitation, its time-mean spatial pattern of precipitation, and its space-time structure of tropical precipitation, including the Madden-Julian Oscillation. Moreover, ACE’s climate biases with respect to EAMv2 are substantially smaller than EAMv2’s own biases compared to the observed historical average surface precipitation rate and top-of-atmosphere radiative fluxes.