A Machine Learning Bias Correction on Large-Scale Environment of High-Impact Weather Systems in E3SM Atmosphere Model

Abstract

Large-scale dynamical and thermodynamical processes are common environmental drivers of high-impact weather systems causing extreme weather events. However, such large-scale environmental conditions often display systematic biases in climate simulations, posing challenges to evaluating high-impact weather systems and extreme weather events. In this paper, a machine learning (ML) approach was employed to bias correct the large-scale wind, temperature, and humidity simulated by the atmospheric component of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) at ∼1° resolution. The usefulness of the ML approach for extreme weather analysis was demonstrated with a focus on three high-impact weather systems, including tropical cyclones (TCs), extratropical cyclones (ETCs), and atmospheric rivers (ARs). We show that the ML model can effectively reduce climate bias in large-scale wind, temperature, and humidity while preserving their responses to imposed climate change perturbations. The bias correction is found to directly improve water vapor transport associated with ARs, and representations of thermodynamical flows associated with ETCs. When the bias-corrected large-scale winds are used to drive a synthetic TC track forecast model over the Atlantic basin, the resulting TC track density agrees better with that of the TC track model driven by observed winds. In addition, the ML model insignificantly interferes with the mean climate change signals of large-scale storm environments as well as the occurrence and intensity of three weather systems. This study suggests that the proposed ML approach can be used to improve the downscaling of extreme weather events by providing more realistic large-scale storm environments simulated by low-resolution climate models.