A collection of research papers on diffusion and related score-based generative models for weather forecasting, climate and atmospheric science.
The papers are ordered by the date of first public release, usually the first arXiv submission (not the journal publication date).
Last updated: 2026-10-30. This is a curated research list rather than an exhaustive index. Publication venues are updated when known; - indicates an unconfirmed or unpublished venue. Flow-matching papers are included where they are directly relevant to diffusion-based weather forecasting.
| (Model Name) - Paper Title | Topic | Publication | Date (↓) | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Solar Forecasts | Cloud Cover Forecasting | - | 2023.02 | [paper] |
| LDCast - Latent diffusion models for generative precipitation nowcasting with accurate uncertainty quantification | Precipitation Nowcasting | - | 2023.04 | [paper] [code] |
| DiffESM - Conditional Emulation of Earth System Models with Diffusion Models | Emulation | ICLR 2023 Workshop | 2023.04 | [paper] [code] |
| SEEDS - Emulation of Weather Forecast Ensembles with Diffusion Models | Ensemble Forecast Emulation | Science Advances | 2023.06 | [paper] |
| DYffusion - A Dynamics-informed Diffusion Model for Spatiotemporal Forecasting | Spatiotemporal Forecasting | NeurIPS 2023 | 2023.06 | [paper] [code] |
| SwinRDM - Integrate SwinRNN with Diffusion Model towards High-Resolution and High-Quality Weather Forecasting | Global Weather Forecasting | AAAI 2023 | 2023.06 | [paper] |
| PreDiff - Precipitation Nowcasting with Latent Diffusion Models | Precipitation Nowcasting | NeurIPS 2023 | 2023.07 | [paper] [code] |
| GDE - Precipitation nowcasting with generative diffusion models | Precipitation Nowcasting | - | 2023.08 | [paper] [code] |
| CorrDiff - Residual corrective diffusion modeling for km-scale atmospheric downscaling | Downscaling | Communications Earth & Environment 2025 | 2023.10 | [paper] |
| FuXi-Extreme - Improving extreme rainfall and wind forecasts with diffusion model | Global (Extreme) Weather Forecasting | - | 2023.10 | [paper] |
| OF-Diff - Probabilistic Precipitation Downscaling with Optical Flow-Guided Diffusion | Downscaling | - | 2023.11 | [paper] |
| GenCast - Diffusion-based ensemble forecasting for medium-range weather | Global Weather Forecasting | Nature | 2023.12 | [paper] [code] |
| DiffCast - A Unified Framework via Residual Diffusion for Precipitation Nowcasting | Precipitation Nowcasting | CVPR 2024 | 2023.12 | [paper] [code] |
| DGDM - Deterministic Guidance Diffusion Model for Probabilistic Weather Forecasting | Weather Forecasting using Satellite | ECCV 2024 | 2023.12 | [paper] [code] |
| Advancing Realistic Precipitation Nowcasting With a Spatiotemporal Transformer-Based Denoising Diffusion Model | Precipitation Nowcasting | IEEE TGRS | 2024.01 | [paper] |
| DiffDA - A diffusion model for weather-scale data assimilation | Data Assimilation | ICML 2024 | 2024.01 | [paper] [code] |
| LT3P - Long-Term Typhoon Trajectory Prediction: A Physics-Conditioned Approach Without Reanalysis Data | Tropical Cyclone Trajectory Forecasting | ICLR 2024 | 2024.01 | [paper] [code] |
| Wind speed super-resolution and validation: from ERA5 to CERRA via diffusion models | Super resolution | - | 2024.01 | [paper] [code] |
| ExtremeCast - Boosting Extreme Value Prediction for Global Weather Forecast | Global (Extreme) Weather Forecasting | - | 2024.02 | [paper] [code] |
| CasCast - Skillful High-resolution Precipitation Nowcasting via Cascaded Modelling | Precipitation Nowcasting | ICML 2024 | 2024.02 | [paper] [code] |
| SDEdit-Weather - Weather Prediction with Diffusion Guided by Realistic Forecast Processes | Global Weather Forecasting | - | 2024.02 | [paper] |
| Physics-Informed Diffusion Model and Sampling for Global Weather Forecasting | Global Weather Forecasting | - | 2024.03 | [paper] |
| DiffObs - Generative Diffusion for Global Forecasting of Satellite Observations | Global Preciptation Forecasting | ICLR 2024 Workshop | 2024.04 | [paper] |
| Diffusion-Based Joint Temperature and Precipitation Emulation of Earth System Models | Emulation | ICLR 2024 Workshop | 2024.04 | [paper] |
| SLAMS - Deep Generative Data Assimilation in Multimodal Setting | Data Assimilation | CVPR 2024 Workshop | 2024.04 | [paper] [code] |
| ClimateDiffuse - Generative Diffusion-based Downscaling for Climate | Downscaling | - | 2024.04 | [paper] [code] |
| CloudDiff - Super-resolution ensemble retrieval of cloud properties for all day using the generative diffusion model | Super-resolution | - | 2024.05 | [paper] |
| Spherical DYffusion - Probabilistic Emulation of a Global Climate Model with Spherical DYffusion | Global Climate Modelling | NeurIPS 2024 | 2024.06 | [paper] [code] |
| Towards diffusion models for large-scale sea-ice modelling | Sea-Ice modelling | - | 2024.06 | [paper] |
| Generative Data Assimilation of Sparse Weather Station Observations at Kilometer Scales | Data Assimilation | - | 2024.06 | [paper] |
| LDM_res - Can AI be enabled to dynamical downscaling? A Latent Diffusion Model to mimic km-scale COSMO5.0_CLM9 simulations | Downscaling | - | 2024.06 | [paper] [code] |
| Latent Diffusion Model for Generating Ensembles of Climate Simulations | Ensemble Forecasting | - | 2024.07 | [paper] |
| CPMGEM - Machine learning emulation of precipitation from km-scale regional climate simulations using a diffusion model | Precipitation Forecasting | - | 2024.07 | [paper] [code] |
| Forecasting Tropical Cyclones with Cascaded Diffusion Models | TC/Precipitation Forecasting | ICLR 2024 Workshop | 2024.07 | [paper] [code] |
| KESHDiff - Generative Diffusion Model-based Downscaling of Observed Sea Surface Height over Kuroshio Extension since 2000 | Downscaling | - | 2024.08 | [paper] |
| StormCast - Kilometer-Scale Convection Allowing Model Emulation using Generative Diffusion Modeling | Emulation | - | 2024.08 | [paper] |
| DifERS - A Generative Diffusion Model for Probabilistic Ensembles of Precipitation Maps Conditioned on Multisensor Satellite Observations | Precipitation Forecasting | - | 2024.09 | [paper] |
| CoDiCast - Conditional Diffusion Model for Weather Prediction with Uncertainty Quantification | Global Weather Forecasting | - | 2024.09 | [paper] [code] |
| R2-D2 - Dynamical-generative downscaling of climate model ensembles | Downscaling | - | 2024.10 | [paper] |
| Yantian - An Application Platform for AI Global Weather Forecasting Models | Global Weather Forecasting | - | 2024.10 | [paper] |
| ARCI - Continuous Ensemble Weather Forecasting with Diffusion models | Ensemble Forecasting | ICLR 2025 | 2024.10 | [paper] [code] |
| IceDiff - High Resolution and High-Quality Sea Ice Forecasting with Generative Diffusion Prior | Sea Ice Forecasting | - | 2024.10 | [paper] |
| Ensemble-based, large-eddy reconstruction of wind turbine inflow in a near-stationary atmospheric boundary layer through generative artificial intelligence | Data Reconstruction | - | 2024.10 | [paper] |
| TCP-Diffusion - A Multi-modal Diffusion Model for Global Tropical Cyclone Precipitation Forecasting with Change Awareness | TC/Precipitation Forecasting | - | 2024.10 | [paper] |
| WassDiff - Downscaling Extreme Precipitation With Wasserstein Regularized Diffusion | Precipitation Downscaling / Extremes | IEEE TGRS 2025 | 2024.10 | [paper] [code] |
| GenBCSR - Statistical Downscaling via High-Dimensional Distribution Matching with Generative Models | Downscaling | - | 2024.12 | [paper] |
| Downscaling Precipitation with Bias-informed Conditional Diffusion Model | Downscaling | - | 2024.12 | [paper] [code] |
| A Generative Framework for Probabilistic, Spatiotemporally Coherent Downscaling of Climate Simulation | Downscaling | - | 2024.12 | [paper] [code] |
| ArchesWeatherGen - ArchesWeather & ArchesWeatherGen: a deterministic and generative model for efficient ML weather forecasting | Global Probabilistic Forecasting (Flow Matching) | Science Advances 2026 | 2024.12 | [paper] [code] |
| Using Generative Models to Produce Realistic Populations of UK Windstorms | Windstorm Simulation | - | 2025.01 | [paper] |
| Improving Tropical Cyclone Forecasting With Video Diffusion Models | Tropical Cyclone Forecasting | - | 2025.01 | [paper] [code] |
| Ensemble score filter with image inpainting for data assimilation in tracking surface quasi-geostrophic dynamics with partial observations | Data Assimilation | - | 2025.01 | [paper] [code] |
| SGD - Satellite Observations Guided Diffusion Model for Accurate Meteorological States at Arbitrary Resolution | Downscaling | - | 2025.02 | [paper] |
| SATcast - Skillful Nowcasting of Convective Clouds With a Cascade Diffusion Model | Convective Clouds Nowcasting | - | 2025.02 | [paper] [code] |
| Diffusion-LAM - Probabilistic Limited Area Weather Forecasting with Diffusion | Probabilistic/Regional Forecasting | - | 2025.02 | [paper] [code] |
| Data-driven Mesoscale Weather Forecasting Combining Swin-Unet and Diffusion Models | Mesoscale Forecasting | - | 2025.03 | [paper] |
| Appa - Bending Weather Dynamics with Latent Diffusion Models for Global Data Assimilation | Data Assimilation | - | 2025.04 | [paper] [code] |
| cBottle - Climate in a Bottle: Towards a Generative Foundation Model for the Kilometer-Scale Global Atmosphere | Global Weather Forecasting | - | 2025.05 | [paper] [code] |
| Score-based diffusion nowcasting of GOES imagery | Cloud Nowcasting | - | 2025.05 | [paper] [code] |
| Align-DA - Align Score-based Atmospheric Data Assimilation with Multiple Preferences | Data Assimilation | - | 2025.05 | [paper] |
| Using Diffusion Models to do Data Assimilation | Data Assimilation | - | 2025.06 | [paper] |
| DEF - Diffusion-augmented Ensemble Forecasting | Ensemble Forecasting | - | 2025.06 | [paper] |
| MODS - Multi-source Observations Conditional Diffusion Model for Meteorological State Downscaling | Downscaling | - | 2025.06 | [paper] |
| ERDM - Elucidated Rolling Diffusion Models for Probabilistic Forecasting of Complex Dynamics | Probabilistic Forecasting | NeurIPS 2025 | 2025.06 | [paper] [code] |
| LaDCast - A Latent Diffusion Model for Medium-Range Ensemble Weather Forecasting | Global Weather Forecasting | - | 2025.06 | [paper] [code] |
| Guided Unconditional and Conditional Generative Models for Super-Resolution and Inference of Quasi-Geostrophic Turbulence | Super-resolution | - | 2025.07 | [paper] [code] |
| HRRRCast - Data-driven emulator for regional weather forecasting at convection allowing scales | Regional Weather Forecasting | - | 2025.07 | [paper] |
| Efficient Kilometer-Scale Precipitation Downscaling with Conditional Wavelet Diffusion | Precipitation Downscaling | - | 2025.07 | [paper] |
| Generative Lagrangian data assimilation for ocean dynamics under extreme sparsity | Data Assimilation | - | 2025.07 | [paper] [code] |
| DDMS - Four-hour thunderstorm nowcasting using a deep diffusion model for satellite data | Convective Cloud / Thunderstorm Nowcasting | PNAS 2025 | 2025.12 | [paper] |
| An intercomparison of generative machine learning methods for downscaling precipitation at fine spatial scales | Precipitation Downscaling / Model Comparison | - | 2025.12 | [paper] |
| WIND - Weather Inverse Diffusion for Zero-Shot Atmospheric Modeling | Forecasting / Downscaling / Data Assimilation | ICML 2026 | 2026.02 | [paper] [code] |
| DiffScale - Continuous Downscaling and Bias Correction of Subseasonal Wind Speed Forecasts Using Diffusion Models | Subseasonal Downscaling / Bias Correction | JAMES 2026 | 2026.03 | [paper] |
| Downscaling weather forecasts from Low- to High-Resolution with Diffusion Models | Ensemble Downscaling (Anemoi) | - | 2026.03 | [paper] |
| Towards accurate extreme event likelihoods from diffusion model climate emulators | Climate Emulation / Extreme Event Likelihoods | - | 2026.05 | [paper] |
| Joint bias correction and downscaling of subseasonal forecasts via diffusion models | Subseasonal Downscaling / Bias Correction | Environmental Data Science 2026 | 2026.07 | [paper] |
| Precipitation Downscaling Using Foundation Model-Conditioned Diffusion | Precipitation Downscaling | - | 2026.08 | [paper] |
| Diffusion Distillation for Efficient Weather Ensembles | Ensemble Forecasting / Efficient Sampling | - | 2026.08 | [paper] |
| FuXi-TC - A generative framework integrating deep learning and physics-based models for improved tropical cyclone forecasts | Tropical Cyclone Forecasting | npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 2026 | 2026.09 | [paper] |
| GenLUPIN - Physics-Informed Score-Based Diffusion in a Lagrangian Framework for Spectrally Consistent Precipitation Nowcasting | Precipitation Nowcasting | IEEE Access 2026 | 2026.09 | [paper] |
| NowcastDiT - Diffusion Transformers are Effective Precipitation Nowcasters | Precipitation Nowcasting | - | 2026.09 | [paper] |
| Proper Scoring Rule-based Diffusion for Probabilistic Weather Forecasting | Probabilistic Weather Forecasting | - | 2026.09 | [paper] |
| JWS - Just Weather Scoring: Efficient End-to-end Nowcasting with Distributional Diffusion | Precipitation Nowcasting / Efficient Sampling | - | 2026.10 | [paper] |
| Diffusion Precipitation Generation with Medium-range Weather Forecasting | Global Precipitation Forecasting | - | 2026.10 | [paper] |
| - | - | - | 2025.00 | [paper] [code] |