FuXi-Ocean: A Global 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 FuXi-Ocean, 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.