Slow-OCast: Slow-Varying Motion Inspired Transfer Learning for Regional High-Resolution Ocean Environmental Forecasting

Abstract

Regional high-resolution ocean environmental forecasting combines spatial numerical modeling with temporal prediction, and is essential for monitoring the ecological security of specific ocean regions. In recent years, deep learning methods are generally more computationally efficient than traditional numerical models and enable fast, accurate forecasting. However, as data resolution increases, the training and computational costs of existing approaches increase substantially. To address this issue, we introduce Slow-OCast, a transfer-learning based model designed for high-resolution ocean environmental forecasting. Specifically, Slow-OCast incorporates the slow-varying motion characteristics of the ocean and comprises two insightful modules. The Fluid Motion Separator that injects low-frequency background dynamics into the fine-tuning process of a foundation model, functioning as a "magnifier" to encode physical priors of ocean dynamics. The Hydrokinetic Energy Path Integrator that provides an implicit representation of flow-field evolution, serving as a "compass" to guide accurate change prediction. We evaluate Slow-OCast on two high-resolution Mediterranean datasets, and results demonstrate Slow-OCast consistently outperforms all baseline methods across forecasting tasks with different lead times.