Articles | Volume 19, issue 13
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-6027-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-6027-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
A self-supervised precipitation forecast verification based on contrastive learning
College of Meteorology and Oceanography, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410072, China
High Impact Weather Key Laboratory of CMA, Changsha, 410072, China
Shuwen Huang
College of Meteorology and Oceanography, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410072, China
Qian Li
College of Meteorology and Oceanography, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410072, China
High Impact Weather Key Laboratory of CMA, Changsha, 410072, China
Xuan Peng
College of Meteorology and Oceanography, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410072, China
High Impact Weather Key Laboratory of CMA, Changsha, 410072, China
Haoming Chen
State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather Meteorological Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China
Kefeng Zhu
Nanjing Innovation Institute for Atmospheric Sciences, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences-Jiangsu Meteorological Service, Nanjing, 210041, China
Liwen Wang
College of Meteorology and Oceanography, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410072, China
Sheng Li
College of Meteorology and Oceanography, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410072, China
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Clouds strongly affect how sunlight and heat move through the atmosphere, but their vertical layers make them hard to study. We examined how different cloud layers influence satellite estimates of cloud thickness and droplet size using observations and computer simulations over China. We found that high ice clouds can hide lower water clouds, causing large errors. This shows satellites need to consider cloud layers to improve accuracy.
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Our research presents a novel deep learning approach called "TemDeep" for downscaling atmospheric variables at arbitrary time resolutions based on temporal coherence. Results show that our method can accurately recover evolution details superior to other methods, reaching 53.7 % in the restoration rate. Our findings are important for advancing weather forecasting models and enabling more precise and reliable predictions to support disaster preparedness, agriculture, and sustainable development.
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By directly analyzing the proximity of precipitation forecasts and observations, a precipitation accuracy score (PAS) method was constructed. This method does not utilize a traditional contingency-table-based classification verification; however, it can replace the threat score (TS), equitable threat score (ETS), and other skill score methods, and it can be used to calculate the accuracy of numerical models or quantitative precipitation forecasts.
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Short summary
We developed a contrastive learning method (CLPFV - contrastive learning-based precipitation forecast verification) to improve the accuracy of precipitation forecast verification. The proposed method uses precipitation augmentation to simulate real-world forecast errors with gradients and then employs an improved loss function to reflect these errors in the contrastive learning. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms traditional and spatial verification methods across different error types and aligns better with expert judgment.
We developed a contrastive learning method (CLPFV - contrastive learning-based precipitation...