HEAL-ViT: Vision Transformers on a spherical mesh for medium-range weather forecasting

arXiv:2403.17016v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: In recent years, a variety of ML architectures and techniques have seen success in producing skillful medium range weather forecasts. In particular, Vision Transformer (ViT)-based models (e.g. Pangu-Weather, FuXi) have shown strong performance, working nearly "out-of-the-box" by treating weather data as a multi-channel image on a rectilinear grid. While a rectilinear grid is appropriate for 2D images, weather data is inherently spherical and thus heavily distorted at the poles on a rectilinear grid, leading to …

abstract architectures arxiv box cs.cv cs.lg data forecasting image medium mesh performance physics.ao-ph success transformer transformers type vision vision transformers vit weather weather data weather forecasting