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Vision Transformers for Multi-Variable Climate Downscaling: Emulating Regional Climate Models with a Shared Encoder and Multi-Decoder Architecture

Created by
  • Haebom

Author

Fabio Merizzi, Harilaos Loukos

Outline

In this paper, we present a deep learning-based climate variable downscaling method that simultaneously handles multiple variables to address the challenges of regional studies due to the low spatial resolution of global climate models (GCMs). To overcome the limitations of conventional single-variable models, we propose a multi-task, multivariable Vision Transformer (ViT) architecture (1EMD) with a shared encoder and variable-specific decoder. The architecture mimics RCM-level downscaling for the European region by predicting three key climate variables: surface temperature (tas), wind speed (sfcWind), and 500 hPa geostationary altitude (zg500) from GCM-resolution inputs. Experimental results show that the proposed multivariable approach outperforms single-variable baseline models and also improves computational efficiency.

Takeaways, Limitations

Takeaways:
An efficient deep learning-based approach for multivariate climate variable downscaling is presented.
Consider interactions between variables and improve performance through multivariate modeling.
Increased computational efficiency compared to conventional RCM-based downscaling.
Validating the effectiveness of multivariate modeling through prediction of actual climate variables.
Limitations:
Currently only downscaling is performed for the European region, and further verification of generalizability to other regions is required.
Considering only a limited number of climate variables, there is a need to develop models that include more variables.
Further research is needed to improve the model's interpretability and reliability.
Dependency on the quality of GCM input data.
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