Physics-constrained generative machine learning-based high-resolution downscaling of Greenland's surface mass balance and surface temperature


Contact
nils.bochow [ at ] awi.de

Abstract

Abstract. Accurate, high-resolution projections of the Greenland ice sheet’s surface mass balance (SMB) and surface temperature are essential for understanding future sea-level rise, yet current approaches are either computationally demanding or limited to coarse spatial scales. Here, we introduce a novel physics-constrained generative modeling framework based on a consistency model (CM) to downscale low-resolution SMB and surface temperature fields by a factor of up to 32 (from 160 to 5 km grid spacing) in a few sampling steps. The CM is trained on monthly outputs of the regional climate model MARv3.12 and conditioned on ice-sheet topography and insolation. By enforcing a hard conservation constraint during inference, we ensure approximate preservation of SMB and temperature sums on the coarse spatial scale as well as robust generalization to extreme climate states without retraining. On the test set, our constrained CM achieves a continued ranked probability score of 5.37 mmw.e. per month for the SMB and 0.1 K for the surface temperature, outperforming interpolation-based downscaling. Together with spatial power-spectral analysis, we demonstrate that the CM faithfully reproduces variability across spatial scales. We further apply bias-corrected outputs of the NorESM2 Earth System Model and the Community Earth System Model CESM2-WACCM as inputs to our CM, to demonstrate the potential of our model to directly downscale ESM fields. Our approach delivers realistic, high-resolution climate forcing for ice-sheet simulations with fast inference and can be readily integrated into Earth-system and ice-sheet model workflows to improve projections of the future contribution to sea-level rise from Greenland and potentially other ice sheets and glaciers too.



Item Type
Article
Authors
Divisions
Primary Division
Programs
Primary Topic
Publication Status
Published
Eprint ID
60733
DOI 10.5194/tc-20-1841-2026

Cite as
Bochow, N. , Hess, P. and Robinson, A. (2026): Physics-constrained generative machine learning-based high-resolution downscaling of Greenland's surface mass balance and surface temperature , The Cryosphere, 20 (3), pp. 1841-1866 . doi: 10.5194/tc-20-1841-2026


Download
[thumbnail of tc-20-1841-2026.pdf]
Preview
PDF
tc-20-1841-2026.pdf - Other

Download (22MB) | Preview

Share
Add to AnyAdd to TwitterAdd to FacebookAdd to LinkedinAdd to PinterestAdd to Email


Citation

Research Platforms
N/A


Actions
Edit Item Edit Item