OceanForecastBench: A Benchmark Dataset for Data-Driven Global Ocean Forecasting

TL;DR

OceanForecastBench provides a comprehensive, open-source benchmark dataset and evaluation framework for data-driven global ocean forecasting, enabling consistent model development, fair comparison, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Contribution

It introduces a high-quality, multi-variable global ocean dataset, a reliable evaluation dataset, and a standardized benchmarking pipeline for data-driven ocean forecasting models.

Findings

Benchmark includes 6 baseline models for comparison.

Provides 28 years of reanalysis data for training.

Offers extensive observational data for evaluation.

Abstract

Global ocean forecasting aims to predict key ocean variables such as temperature, salinity, and currents, which is essential for understanding and describing oceanic phenomena. In recent years, data-driven deep learning-based ocean forecast models, such as XiHe, WenHai, LangYa and AI-GOMS, have demonstrated significant potential in capturing complex ocean dynamics and improving forecasting efficiency. Despite these advancements, the absence of open-source, standardized benchmarks has led to inconsistent data usage and evaluation methods. This gap hinders efficient model development, impedes fair performance comparison, and constrains interdisciplinary collaboration. To address this challenge, we propose OceanForecastBench, a benchmark offering three core contributions: (1) A high-quality global ocean reanalysis data over 28 years for model training, including 4 ocean variables across 23 depth levels and 4 sea surface variables. (2) A high-reliability satellite and in-situ observations for model evaluation, covering approximately 100 million locations in the global ocean. (3) An evaluation pipeline and a comprehensive benchmark with 6 typical baseline models, leveraging observations to evaluate model performance from multiple perspectives. OceanForecastBench represents the most comprehensive benchmarking framework currently available for data-driven ocean forecasting, offering an open-source platform for model development, evaluation, and comparison. The dataset and code are publicly available at: https://github.com/Ocean-Intelligent-Forecasting/OceanForecastBench.