SamudrACE: Fast and Accurate Coupled Climate Modeling With 3D Ocean and Atmosphere Emulators
Abstract Traditional numerical global climate models simulate the full Earth system by exchanging boundary conditions between separate simulators of the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, land surface, and other geophysical processes. This paradigm allows for distributed development of individual components within a common framework, unified by a coupler that handles translation between realms via spatial or temporal alignment and flux exchange. Following a similar approach adapted for machine learning‐based emulators, we present SamudrACE: a coupled global climate model emulator which produces centuries‐long simulations at 1‐degree horizontal, 6‐hourly atmospheric, and 5‐daily oceanic resolution, with 145 2D fields spanning 8 atmospheric and 19 oceanic vertical levels, plus sea ice, surface, and top‐of‐atmosphere variables. SamudrACE is highly stable and has low climate biases comparable to those of its components with prescribed boundary forcing, with realistic variability in coupled climate phenomena such as ENSO that is not possible to simulate in uncoupled mode.
Authors
- Alistair Adcroft (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9413-1017)
- Oliver Watt‐Meyer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8419-1526)
- James Duncan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3297-681X)
- Adam Subel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3379-4180)
- Laure Zanna (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8472-4828)
- Anna Kwa (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9631-401X)
- Julius Busecke (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8571-865X)
- W. A. Perkins (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7742-7609)
- Christopher S. Bretherton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6712-8856)
- Brian Henn (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6384-2051)
- Spencer K. Clark (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5595-7895)
- William J. Hurlin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7390-6669)
- Jeremy McGibbon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4955-9772)
- William King Gregory (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8176-1642)
- Troy Arcomano (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9359-6020)
- Surya Dheeshjith (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1286-7328)
- Elynn Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6039-5997)
- Carlos Fernandez-Granda
Institutions
- Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (US)
- NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (US)
- Princeton University (US)
- Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (US)
- Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (US)
- New York University (US)
- Columbia University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Published
- 2026-05-30
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl119340
- Primary Topic
- Methane Hydrates and Related Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Princeton University
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration