Diffusion Distillation for Efficient Weather Ensembles

Researchers introduced a supervised energy-distance distillation method that compresses a multi-step diffusion teacher into a single-step student for weather ensemble forecasting, matching or surpassing the teacher's skill across key metrics using only one neural function evaluation per autoregressive step. The method outperformed existing distillation approaches on global forecasting and typhoon-track prediction while preserving skill for extreme events, according to a paper submitted to arXiv on 27 Aug 2026.

Computer Science Machine Learning Submitted on 27 Aug 2026 Title:Diffusion Distillation for Efficient Weather Ensembles View PDF /pdf/2608.27728 HTML experimental https://arxiv.org/html/2608.27728v1 Abstract:Diffusion models generate skillful weather ensembles but require costly iterative sampling. We introduce a supervised energy-distance distillation method that compresses a multi-step diffusion teacher into a single-step student by aligning student forecasts with teacher samples and ground-truth observations. Experiments on global forecasting and typhoon-track prediction show that our student outperforms existing distillation methods and preserves skill for extreme events. It matches or surpasses the teacher across key metrics using only one neural function evaluation per autoregressive step. Current browse context: cs.LG References & Citations Loading... Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer What is the Explorer? https://info.arxiv.org/labs/showcase.html arxiv-bibliographic-explorer Connected Papers What is Connected Papers? https://www.connectedpapers.com/about Litmaps What is Litmaps? https://www.litmaps.co/ scite Smart Citations What are Smart Citations? https://www.scite.ai/ Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv What is alphaXiv? https://alphaxiv.org/ CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers What is CatalyzeX? https://www.catalyzex.com DagsHub What is DagsHub? https://dagshub.com/ Gotit.pub What is GotitPub? http://gotit.pub/faq Hugging Face What is Huggingface? https://huggingface.co/huggingface ScienceCast What is ScienceCast? https://sciencecast.org/welcome Demos Recommenders and Search Tools Influence Flower What are Influence Flowers? https://influencemap.cmlab.dev/ CORE Recommender What is CORE? https://core.ac.uk/services/recommender IArxiv Recommender What is IArxiv? https://iarxiv.org/about arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs https://info.arxiv.org/labs/index.html .