A multivariate global spatiotemporal stochastic generator for climate ensembles

Given the high-dimensionality of the input space of a climate model, as well as the complex, nonlinear relationships between the climate variables, a large ensemble is often required to accurately assess these uncertainties. If only a small number of climate variables are of interest at a specified spatial and temporal scale, the computational and storage expenses can be substantially reduced by training a statistical model on a small ensemble.

The statistical model then acts as a stochastic generator (SG) able to simulate a large ensemble, given a small training ensemble. Previous work on SGs has focused on modeling and simulating individual climate variables (e.g., surface temperature, wind speed) independently. Here, we introduce a SG that jointly simulates three key climate variables.