A Diffusion-Contrastive Graph Neural Network with Virtual Nodes for Wind Nowcasting in Unobserved Regions

Abstract

Accurate weather nowcasting remains one of the central challenges in atmospheric science, with critical implications for climate resilience, energy security, and disaster preparedness. Since it is not feasible to deploy observation stations everywhere, some regions lack dense observational networks, resulting in unreliable short-term wind predictions across those unobserved areas. Here we present a deep graph self-supervised framework that extends nowcasting capability into such unobserved regions without requiring new sensors. Our approach introduces "virtual nodes" into a diffusion and contrastive-based graph neural network, enabling the model to learn wind condition (i.e., speed, direction and gusts) in places with no direct measurements. Using high-temporal resolution weather station data across the Netherlands, we demonstrate that this approach reduces nowcast mean absolute error (MAE) of wind speed, gusts, and direction in unobserved regions by more than 30% - 46% compared with interpolation and regression methods. By enabling localized nowcasts where no measurements exist, this method opens new pathways for renewable energy integration, agricultural planning, and early-warning systems in data-sparse regions.