temporal resolution
Cloud4D: Estimating Cloud Properties at a High Spatial and Temporal Resolution
There has been great progress in improving numerical weather prediction and climate models using machine learning. However, most global models act at a kilometer-scale, making it challenging to model individual clouds and factors such as extreme precipitation, wind gusts, turbulence, and surface irradiance. Therefore, there is a need to move towards higher-resolution models, which in turn require high-resolution real-world observations that current instruments struggle to obtain. We present Cloud4D, the first learning-based framework that reconstructs a physically consistent, four-dimensional cloud state using only synchronized ground-based cameras.
FuXi-Ocean: AGlobal Ocean Forecasting System with Sub-Daily Resolution
Accurate, high-resolution ocean forecasting is crucial for maritime operations and environmental monitoring. While traditional numerical models are capable of producing sub-daily, eddy-resolving forecasts, they are computationally intensive and face challenges in maintaining accuracy at fine spatial and temporal scales. In contrast, recent data-driven approaches offer improved computational efficiency and emerging potential, yet typically operate at daily resolution and struggle with sub-daily predictions due to error accumulation over time. We introduce FuXiOcean, the first data-driven global ocean forecasting model achieving six-hourly predictions at eddy-resolving 1/12 spatial resolution, reaching depths of up to 1500 meters. The model architecture integrates a context-aware feature extraction module with a predictive network employing stacked attention blocks. The core innovation is the Mixture-of-Time (MoT) module, which adaptively integrates predictions from multiple temporal contexts by learning variable-specific reliability, mitigating cumulative errors in sequential forecasting. Through comprehensive experimental evaluation, FuXi-Ocean demonstrates superior skill in predicting key variables, including temperature, salinity, and currents, across multiple depths.
Visual Decoding and Reconstruction via EEG Embeddings with Guided Diffusion
How to decode human vision through neural signals has attracted a long-standing interest in neuroscience and machine learning. Modern contrastive learning and generative models improved the performance of visual decoding and reconstruction based on functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). However, the high cost and low temporal resolution of fMRI limit their applications in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), prompting a high need for visual decoding based on electroencephalography (EEG). In this study, we present an end-to-end EEG-based visual reconstruction zero-shot framework, consisting of a tailored brain encoder, called the Adaptive Thinking Mapper (ATM), which projects neural signals from different sources into the shared subspace as the clip embedding, and a two-stage multi-pipe EEG-to-image generation strategy. In stage one, EEG is embedded to align the high-level clip embedding, and then the prior diffusion model refines EEG embedding into image priors.
WildfireSpreadTS: A dataset of multi-modal time series for wildfire spread prediction
We present a multi-temporal, multi-modal remote-sensing dataset for predicting how active wildfires will spread at a resolution of 24 hours. The dataset consists of 13 607 images across 607 fire events in the United States from January 2018 to October 2021. For each fire event, the dataset contains a full time series of daily observations, containing detected active fires and variables related to fuel, topography and weather conditions. The dataset is challenging due to: a) its inputs being multi-temporal, b) the high number of 23 multi-modal input channels, c) highly imbalanced labels and d) noisy labels, due to smoke, clouds, and inaccuracies in the active fire detection.
Managing Temporal Resolution in Continuous Value Estimation: A Fundamental Trade-off
A default assumption in reinforcement learning (RL) and optimal control is that observations arrive at discrete time points on a fixed clock cycle. Yet, many applications involve continuous-time systems where the time discretization, in principle, can be managed. The impact of time discretization on RL methods has not been fully characterized in existing theory, but a more detailed analysis of its effect could reveal opportunities for improving data-efficiency. We address this gap by analyzing Monte-Carlo policy evaluation for LQR systems and uncover a fundamental trade-off between approximation and statistical error in value estimation. Importantly, these two errors behave differently to time discretization, leading to an optimal choice of temporal resolution for a given data budget. These findings show that managing the temporal resolution can provably improve policy evaluation efficiency in LQR systems with finite data. Empirically, we demonstrate the trade-off in numerical simulations of LQR instances and standard RL benchmarks for non-linear continuous control.