Learning to Refine: Spectral-Decoupled Iterative Refinement Framework for Precipitation Nowcasting

Abstract

Accurate precipitation nowcasting is vital for disaster mitigation, but deep learning methods suffer a key trade-off: regression models produce over-smoothed, spectrally decaying predictions that blur convective details and violate turbulence power laws; diffusion models generate realistic yet unanchored hallucinations lacking physical grounding. We propose Spectral-Decoupled Iterative Refinement (SDIR), a deterministic framework that reformulates nowcasting as progressive frequency-decoupled refinement. SDIR first extracts a stable low-frequency synoptic skeleton, then iteratively refines high-frequency textures under physical constraints, eliminating both blurring and hallucinations. It features a dual-path design: the Synoptic Frequency-Guided Former (SFG-Former) with Scale-Adaptive Transformers for global structure, and the Fourier Residual Refiner (FR-Refiner) with Scale-Conditioned Fourier Neural Operators for fine residuals. A Physically-Consistent Power Spectral Density (PCPSD) loss with dynamic masking enforces turbulence-consistent spectral distribution. Experiments on three benchmarks show SDIR significantly outperforms SOTA in spatial accuracy while achieving spectral fidelity competitive with diffusion-based methods, enabling reliable high-resolution operational nowcasting.