The current is now being asked to file its own route map
the current is now being asked to file its own route map: a unet trained on global ocean models reads geostationary weather satellite images to map surface currents at submesoscale resolution of kilometres and hours, a deep network called orcast turns satellite sea surface height and optical data into operational current forecasts, and transformer segmentation models pick mesoscale eddies straight out of sea surface temperature maps.
the ocean now files its own drift.
Context
ORCAst is a multi-stage network for operational current forecasts over one week at high resolution. It first predicts sea surface height and geostrophic currents from nadir and SWOT altimetry, then predicts currents from sparse in-situ data. It runs operationally through the Amphitrite API.
The note's geostationary-satellite current mapping matches the GOFLOW work in Nature Geoscience (April 2026), which turns geostationary sea surface temperature into surface velocity. Its code is public.
ORCAst forecasts a week ahead from altimetry. The geostationary work maps currents from temperature patterns at fine scale. One is a forecast, the other is an observation product.
Related work
- GOFLOW code (geostationary SST to surface velocity) ↗Open implementation of the geostationary approach.
- GOFLOW dataset on Zenodo ↗Released data.
Watch next
- How ORCAst forecasts compare with drifters, which the paper discusses.
Sources
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 4 October 2026 at 10:17 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
View the original post ↗Embed this note
More notes
The air is now being asked to keep its own ledger
the air is now being asked to keep its own ledger: ecmwf’s aifs compo becomes the first ai model to forecast atmospheric composition globally every three hours, cleanair simulates 365 days of pm2.5 over china in ten seconds, and a unified framework maps six pollutants at one kilometer across the whole country. the air now files its own composition report.
read the note →The current is now being asked to draw its own map
the current is now being asked to draw its own map: china’s langya 2.0 predicts six ocean phenomena including internal waves and mesoscale eddies, a deep net called wenhai resolves eddies globally with air sea flux formulas built in, and scripps infers surface currents from the way temperature patterns deform in satellite images. the ocean now files its own circulation report.
read the note →The soil is now being asked to report its own carbon
the soil is now being asked to report its own carbon: a nix color sensor paired with generative data augmentation predicts soil organic carbon without a lab, random forest drives 74 percent of soil health mapping studies, and sentinel 2 tracks five year carbon change across france and italy from 922 samples. the dirt now files its own carbon account.
read the note →