Ep. 9: FlowCast-ODE Cntinuous Hourly Weather Forecasting with Dynamic Flow Matching and ODE Integration

This episode dives into FlowCast-ODE, a novel deep learning framework designed to achieve accurate and continuous hourly weather forecasting. The model tackles critical challenges in high-frequency prediction, such as the rapid accumulation of errors in autoregressive rollouts and temporal discontinuities inherent in the ERA5 dataset stemming from its 12-hour assimilation cycle. FlowCast-ODE models atmospheric state evolution as a continuous flow using a two-stage, coarse-to-fine strategy: it first learns dynamics on 6-hour intervals via dynamic flow matching and then refines hourly forecasts using an Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) solver to maintain temporal coherence. Experiments demonstrate that FlowCast-ODE outperforms strong baselines, achieving lower root mean square error (RMSE) and reducing blurring to better preserve fine-scale spatial details. Furthermore, the model is highly efficient, reducing its size by about 15% using a lightweight low-rank modulation mechanism, and achieves the capability for hourly forecasting that previously required four separate models in approaches like Pangu-Weather.

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