Seasonal Forecasting of Pan-Arctic Sea Ice with State Space Model

The rapid decline of Arctic sea ice resulting from anthropogenic climate change poses significant risks to indigenous communities, ecosystems, and the global climate system. This situation emphasizes the immediate necessity for precise seasonal sea ice forecasts. While dynamical models perform well for short-term forecasts, they encounter limitations in long-term forecasts and are computationally intensive. Deep learning models, while more computationally efficient, often have difficulty managing seasonal variations and uncertainties when dealing with complex sea ice dynamics. In this research, we introduce IceMamba, a deep learning architecture that integrates sophisticated attention mechanisms within the state space model. Through comparative analysis of 25 renowned forecast models, including dynamical, statistical, and deep learning approaches, our experimental results indicate that IceMamba delivers excellent seasonal forecasting capabilities for Pan-Arctic sea ice concentration. Specifically, IceMamba outperforms all tested models regarding average RMSE and anomaly correlation coefficient (ACC) and ranks second in Integrated Ice Edge Error (IIEE). This innovative approach enhances our ability to foresee and alleviate the effects of sea ice variability, offering essential insights for strategies aimed at climate adaptation.

Interpretable Cross-Sphere Multiscale Deep Learning Predicts ENSO Skilfully Beyond 2 Years

El Ni\~no-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) exerts global climate and societal impacts, but real-time prediction with lead times beyond one year remains challenging. Dynamical models suffer from large biases and uncertainties, while deep learning struggles with interpretability and multi-scale dynamics. Here, we introduce PTSTnet, an interpretable model that unifies dynamical processes and cross-scale spatiotemporal learning in an innovative neural-network framework with physics-encoding learning. PTSTnet produces interpretable predictions significantly outperforming state-of-the-art benchmarks with lead times beyond 24 months, providing physical insights into error propagation in ocean-atmosphere interactions. PTSTnet learns feature representations with physical consistency from sparse data to tackle inherent multi-scale and multi-physics challenges underlying ocean-atmosphere processes, thereby inherently enhancing long-term prediction skill. Our successful realizations mark substantial steps forward in interpretable insights into innovative neural ocean modelling.