NASA and IBM Partner to Develop Geospatial AI for Weather Prediction

by Alisa Davidson

Published: November 30, 2023 at 8:23 am Updated: November 30, 2023 at 8:23 am

by Victor Dey

Edited and fact-checked:
November 30, 2023 at 8:23 am

In Brief

NASA and IBM announced collaboration to develop a geospatial AI model for weather and climate applications.

Nasa and IBM Extend Collaboration to Build AI Model For Weather and Climate Applications

The US government agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and multinational technology company IBM have announced collaborative work on a new generative artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model for weather and climate observation.

The companies aim to join forces to elaborate a multimodal AI foundation model that will predict meteorological phenomena, provide weather forecasts, super-resolution downscaling and identify conditions conducive to wildfires, surpassing in advancement the existing technology.

IBM and NASA expect the new AI model to have expanded accessibility, faster inference time and greater diversity of data compared to the current AI models, such as GraphCast and Fourcastnet. Additionally, the new model will have improved accuracy in weather forecasting and other climate applications.

Collaborative Deployment of Largest Geospatial AI Model

IBM researchers will work alongside NASA domain experts to train the model on the MERRA-2 dataset, a combination of high-quality observations and estimates of past weather over the last 40 years. Once trained and validated, the model will be made openly available on Hugging Face.

In May 2023, the companies deployed another foundational model in a collaborative effort. It harnessed data from NASA satellites for geospatial intelligence, being the largest geospatial model on the open-source AI platform Hugging Face so far.

This model has been used to track and visualize tree planting and growing activities in forest landscapes that retain water in Kenya and analyze urban heat islands in the United Arab Emirates.

In advancing weather and climate analysis, NASA and IBM’s collaborative efforts promise a transformative impact, with innovative AI models designed for enhanced accuracy and expanded applications.

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About The Author

Alisa is a reporter for the Metaverse Post. She focuses on investments, AI, metaverse, and everything related to Web3. Alisa has a degree in Business of Art and expertise in Art & Tech. She has developed her passion for journalism through writing for VCs, notable crypto projects, and engagement with scientific writing.

Alisa Davidson