Precipitation Downscaling

Ask about this topic

Overview

Precipitation downscaling estimates local rainfall or snowfall from coarser weather forecasts, climate simulations, or reanalysis, supporting local hazard assessment and climate planning. Methods range from interpolation and U-Net bias correction to generative diffusion and flow models that use topography, radar context, or physical constraints to create fine-scale fields and probabilistic ensembles. Evaluations compare predictions with radar, satellite, or gauge observations using spatial and spectral scores, event detection, and probabilistic measures such as CRPS. A central challenge is producing realistic fine-scale variability and calibrated extremes without introducing wet or dry bias, while generalizing across regions and changing climates.

Latest papers

CardsList

19 papers4 papers in the last four weeks, down 20% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Climate downscaling with likelihood functional flow matching

    Oct 24, 2026Zhi-Song Liu, Helmi Toropainen, Ammar Kheder +1Climate DownscalingFlow Matching

    Department of Computational Engineering, LUT University, Lappeenranta, Finland. · Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. · Atmospheric Modelling Center, Lahti (AMC-Lahti), Lahti, Finland.

  2. Statistical Downscaling of Daily Precipitation from ERA5 Atmospheric Fields to IMERG over West Africa

    Oct 12, 2026David Sagna, Redouane Lguensat, Samo DiattaPrecipitation DownscalingClimate Downscaling

    Laboratoire d’Océanographie et des Sciences de l’Environnement et du Climat (LOSEC), Université Assane Seck de Ziguinchor, BP 523, Ziguinchor, Senegal · Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL), Sorbonne Université, IRD, 75005 Paris, France

  3. Scale-Recursive Rectified Flows for Few-Step Precipitation Ensembles

    Oct 2, 2026Shunya Nagashima, Takumi BannaiRectified FlowPrecipitation Downscaling

    Neurogica Inc. · LTS, Inc. · ME-Lab Japan, Inc.

  4. RainAtlas: A Multi-Continental Dataset for Precipitation Downscaling

    Sep 30, 2026Pierre-Louis Lemaire, Luca Schmidt, Wietze Suijker +2Precipitation DownscalingCross-Domain Generalization

    connAIx Research School, Tübingen AI Center, University of Tübingen · Mila - Quebec AI Institute · Cluster of Excellence Machine Learning, University of Tübingen +3

  5. Lightweight Probabilistic Downscaling from a Deterministic Base Model

    Sep 24, 2026Joseph McLean, Tiffany Vlaar, Sigrid Passano Hellan +1Climate ScienceU-Net

    University of Glasgow · Climate System and Climate Services, NORCE Research AS and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway

  6. Evaluating Cross-region Generalization for Wavelet-Diffusion Precipitation Downscaling

    Sep 23, 2026Weikang Qian, Yixin Wen, Chugang Yi +3Spatial GeneralizationPrecipitation Downscaling

    University of Florida, Department of Geography, Gainesville, FL, USA · School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA · Institute for Advanced Computational Science, Stony Brook University, NY, USA +5

  7. Efficient Analog-Initialized Latent Transport for Spatially Coherent Probabilistic Downscaling from Global to Kilometer Scales

    Sep 15, 2026Ophélia MirallesProbabilistic ForecastingWeather Forecasting

    Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Oslo, Norway

  8. PCSDiff: Diffusion-Based Bias Correction and Super Resolution Toward Practical Operational Medium-Term Precipitation Forecast

    Sep 7, 2026Yuze Sun, Shiyi Wang, Jiancheng Pan +7Precipitation ForecastingPrecipitation Downscaling

    Department of Earth System Science, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modelling, Institute for Global Change Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd · Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland +3

  9. Diffusion-Based Refinement for Kilometer-Scale Probabilistic Precipitation Nowcasting

    Aug 31, 2026Dohyun Park, Changhoon Song, Tengyuan Chang +2Precipitation ForecastingProbabilistic Forecasting

    Department of Mathematical Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. · Research Institute of Mathematics, Seoul National University, Seoul,2026 Republic of Korea. · Department of Environmental Management, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

  10. Precipitation Downscaling Using Foundation Model-Conditioned Diffusion

    Aug 26, 2026Victor Nascimento Ribeiro, Jorge Guevara, Jorge Sebastian Moraga +7Precipitation DownscalingConditional Diffusion Models

    IBM Research · Fathom · STFC Hartree Centre

  11. Regional Climate Model Emulation with Diffusion Approaches: What is the Added Value of Generative Machine Learning?

    Jun 12, 2026Mikel N. Legasa, Antoine Doury, Achille Gellens +4Climate ModelingDiffusion Models

    Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE), CEA/CNRS/UVSQ, Universit´e Paris Saclay, UMR8212, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France · CNRM, Universit´e de Toulouse, M´et´eo-France, CNRS, Toulouse, France · Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL), FR636, Paris, France +1

  12. Flow Matching for Convective-Scale Precipitation Downscaling

    May 29, 2026Tom WetherellFlow MatchingConditional Flow Matching

    Met Office

  13. Longwang: Zero-Shot Global Spatiotemporal Precipitation Downscaling with a Latent Generative Prior

    May 17, 2026Yue Wang, Daniele VisioniZero-Shot LearningClimate Science

    1*Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, 112 Hollister Drive, Ithaca, 14853, NY, USA.

  14. SwAIther-Precip: Lead-Time-Aware Bias Correction Enables Kilometer-Scale Downscaling of Global AI Precipitation Forecasts over Switzerland

    May 15, 2026Dan Assouline, Erwan Koch, Federico Amato +5Precipitation ForecastingTime Series Forecasting

    Swiss Data Science Center, ETH, Zürich, Switzerland · Expertise Center for Climate Extremes, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland · Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland +1

  15. Multi-Quantile Regression for Extreme Precipitation Downscaling

    May 12, 2026Hamed Najafi, Gareth Lagerwall, Jayantha Obeysekera +1Quantile RegressionPrecipitation Downscaling

    Florida International University Miami, FL · Everglade foundation Miami, FL

  16. Conditional Flow Matching for Probabilistic Downscaling of Maximum 3-day Snowfall in Alaska

    Apr 28, 2026Douglas Brinkerhoff, Elizabeth FischerUncertainty QuantificationClimate Science

    Department of Computer Science, University of Montana · International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska

  17. Physics-Constrained Adaptive Flow Matching for Climate Downscaling

    Apr 3, 2026Kevin Debeire, Aytaç Paçal, Pierre Gentine +3Climate DownscalingPhysics-Informed Generative Modeling

    Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany · School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Germany · LEAP Center, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA +1

  18. IPSL-AID: Generative Diffusion Models for Climate Downscaling from Global to Regional Scales

    Mar 23, 2026Kishanthan Kingston, Olivier Boucher, Freddy Bouchet +5Climate DownscalingPrecipitation Downscaling

    Climate Modeling Center, Sorbonne University, CNRS, IPSL, Paris, France · LMD, CNRS, ENS/PSL, Sorbonne University, IPSL, Paris, France · Climate Modeling and Analysis, LLC, Superior, CO, USA +1

  19. CASCADE: Cross-scale Advective Super-resolution with Climate Assimilation and Downscaling Evolution

    Feb 18, 2026Alexander KovalenkoImage Super-ResolutionPrecipitation Downscaling