Articles | Volume 19, issue 16
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-7545-2026
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-7545-2026
Model evaluation paper
 | 
17 Aug 2026
Model evaluation paper |  | 17 Aug 2026

Comprehensive inter-comparison of generative AI models for super-resolution precipitation downscaling across hydroclimatic regimes

Shivam Singh, Simon Michael Papalexiou, Hebatallah M. Abdelmoaty, Tom Hartvigsen, and Antonios Mamalakis

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Cited articles

Abdelmoaty, H. M., Papalexiou, S. M., Mamalakis, A., Singh, S., Coia, V., Hairabedian, M., Szeftel, P., and Grover, P.: Generative Adversarial Networks for Downscaling Hourly Precipitation in the Canadian Prairies, Journal of Geophysical Research: Machine Learning and Computation, 2, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JH000678, 2025. 
Abdelmoaty, H. M., Papalexiou, S. M., Mamalakis, A., Singh, S., Coia, V., Hairabedian, M., Szeftel, P., and Grover, P.: Does Non-Stationarity Affect GAN-Based Downscaling? Insights from High-Resolution WRF Simulations over the Canadian Prairies, Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems, (Under Review), 2026. 
Baño-Medina, J., Manzanas, R., and Gutiérrez, J. M.: Configuration and intercomparison of deep learning neural models for statistical downscaling, Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 2109–2124, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-2109-2020, 2020. 
Bednarz, T. and Cherukuri, R.: Use of Physics-Based AI for Simulations and Modeling in the Era of Digital Twins, in: SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Courses, 1–45, https://doi.org/10.1145/3610538.3614627, 2023. 
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Short summary
High-resolution precipitation is critical for hydrologic and climate-risk applications, but climate models are too coarse to resolve storm-scale extremes. We compare a deterministic U-NET with two generative models, a Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Network (WGAN) and a diffusion model, for 8× and 16× precipitation downscaling using ERA5-Land. U-NET is stable but smooths extremes, whereas generative models better capture variability and heavy tails while introducing greater uncertainty.
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