Unambiguous Models and Machine Learning Strategies for Anomalous Extreme Events in Turbulent Dynamical System

Abstract

Data-driven modeling methods are studied for turbulent dynamical systems with extreme events under an unambiguous model framework. New neural network architectures are proposed to effectively learn the key dynamical mechanisms including the multiscale coupling and strong instability, and gain robust skill for long-time prediction resistive to the accumulated model errors from the data-driven approximation. The machine learning model overcomes the inherent limitations in traditional long short-time memory networks by exploiting a conditional Gaussian structure informed of the essential physical dynamics. The model performance is demonstrated under a prototype model from idealized geophysical flow and passive tracers, which exhibits analytical solutions with representative statistical features. Many attractive properties are found in the trained model in recovering the hidden dynamics using a limited dataset and sparse observation time, showing uniformly high skill with persistent numerical stability in predicting both the trajectory and statistical solutions among different statistical regimes away from the training regime. The model framework is promising to be applied to a wider class of turbulent systems with complex structures.