FREESIA: Covariance-Aware Posterior Transport for Expressive and Scalable Data Assimilation

Shiwei Ni, Yangwen Zhang, Hang Qi, Xiaofei Guan, Lili Ju

Data assimilation aims to infer the state of complex dynamical systems based on observational data. However, accurate inference of the multimodal posteriors induced by nonlinear or non-injective observation operators remains a key challenge under high-dimensional and sparse observation conditions. Ensemble filters scale to high dimensions but are confined by restrictive distributional assumptions, while training-free generative filters (e.g., EnSF, EnFF) alleviate this limitation but may introduce structural errors and hinder information propagation under sparse observations. To address these issues, we propose a training-free, asymptotically exact posterior transport method. Firstly, a covariance-aware posterior transport scheme is designed, which embeds the forecast cross-covariance into flow-based transport and accurately recovers unobserved states while preserving the non-Gaussian posterior structure. Furthermore, the method combines a tractable observation-adaptive proposal with posterior correction, ensuring accurate approximation of the nonlinear posterior distribution. Finally, we establish the corresponding posterior flow theory, from which the asymptotic exactness of…