Diffusion-model counterfactuals: post-2015 emissions added 0.34°C to Europe's June 2025 heatwave
bravo_abad · x · 2026-10-01
Why asking "what if?" in science takes more than flipping one input: other variables may already carry the effects of the condition you want to change.
Trok et al. used conditional diffusion models trained on climate simulations to generate temperature maps for the same large-scale weather pattern at different cumulative emissions levels. Estimate: Europe's June 2025 heatwave would have been 0.34°C cooler at 2015 emissions levels.
The borrowable trick is input preparation — variables like soil moisture already encode climate change effects, so naive input tweaks fail. The generation approach can transfer to counterfactual analysis in other scientific domains.
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