8th NOAA AI Workshop (2026)

8th NOAA AI Hybrid Workshop

To expand community engagement and increase the accessibility of our activities, this year’s NOAA AI Workshop will host virtual events in March and June. The Workshop event series will conclude with a 3-day hybrid event in Boulder, Colorado with panels and sessions spanning all topics around AI for environmental sciences.

Register offsite link (noaaai2026.sched.com)

August 25, 2026 Agenda (Tuesday)

8:30am – 10:00am	Opening plenary offsite link
10:00am – 10:30am	Break offsite link
10:30am – 12:00pm	Session 1 — AI Weather & Climate Emulation offsite link Speakers: Marco Tedesco, Nicholas Lutsko, Piyush Garg, Spencer Clark, Ayoub Ghriss Nicholas Lutsko (UCSD): Exploring the Atmospheric Responses to Arctic Sea-Ice Loss in Google's NeuralGCM Piyush Garg (RWE Commercial AI Lab): The Recipe Matters More Than the Kitchen: Mathematical Foundations of the AI Weather Prediction Pipeline Spencer Clark (AI2/GFDL): Disentangling the effects of sea surface temperature and CO2 in global machine learned weather-climate emulators Ayoub Ghriss (CU Boulder): Graph-Based Representations for Efficient Neural Assimilation of CESM2 Marco Tedesco (Columbia University): The Modele Atmospherique Regional – Intelligence Artificielle (MAR-IA) for simulating SMB over Greenland
12:00pm – 1:00pm	Break offsite link
1:00pm – 2:30pm	Session 2 — Convection-Allowing & High-Impact Weather Forecasting offsite link Speakers: Corey Potvin, Adam Clark, Isidora Jankov, Nanette Hosenfeld, Austin Park Corey Potvin (NOAA NSSL): WoFSCast: New developments and performance in the 2026 Spring Forecasting Experiment Adam Clark (NOAA NSSL): AI results from the 2026 NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Forecasting Experiment Isidora Jankov (NOAA GSL): HRRRCast Updates: AI-based convection-allowing ensemble forecasting system Nanette Hosenfeld (NWS Colorado Basin River Forecast Center): Modernizing Flash Flood Guidance through Machine Learning and RFC-WFO Collaboration Austin Park (AWS): Faster to First Insight: Agentic AI as a Rapid Supplement to Traditional Weather Forecasting
2:30pm – 3:00pm	Break offsite link
3:00pm – 4:30pm	Session 3 — LLMs, Agents & Trust in the Weather Enterprise offsite link Speakers: Nikhil Manakkal, Eric Allen, Daniel Nietfeld, Ryan Walsh, Jessica Chen, Deeder Aurongzeb Daniel Nietfeld (CIRA): Who issued this warning? Relational trust and the integration of AI/LLMs in the weather enterprise Ryan Walsh (NWS Operations Proving Ground): "Looks Good to Me" Doesn't Clear the Bar: Automating LLM Evaluation for Mission-Critical NWS Workflows Eric Allen (NWS): Modernizing Local Storm Reports and Storm Data Collection through Open Source Intelligence and Agentic AI Jessica Chen & Nikhil Manakkal (NOAA): Development of LLM-Based Chat Tools for Analysis of Probabilistic Weather Forecasts Deeder Aurongzeb (JHU): Quantification of Agentic Trust for Cascading Disasters: A Physics-Informed Human-in-the-Loop Framework

August 26, 2026 Agenda (Wednesday)

8:30am – 10:00am	Plenary - Users Perspective offsite link
10:00am – 10:30am	Break offsite link
10:30am – 12:00pm	Session 4 — Data Discovery, Metadata & Knowledge Tools offsite link Speakers: Matthew Widlansky, Jonathan Mote, Zachary Medley, Chirag Shah, Kevin Lee Matthew Widlansky (University of Hawaii at Manoa): Building an AI Skills Library for Reproducible Environmental Data Analysis Jonathan Mote (NOAA/OAR/WPO): From Sticky Notes to Knowledge Graphs with AI Zachary Medley (ORNL ): Drafting Metadata Records for Atmospheric Science Datasets using an AI Agent with Model Context Protocol (MCP) Servers Chirag Shah (ORNL): ARM Data Advisor (ADA): A Revolution in Atmospheric Data Discovery and Access Kevin Lee (UCLA & NASA-JPL): An Intelligent Toolbox for Multi-Scale Oceanography Analysis
12:00pm – 1:00pm	Break offsite link
1:00pm – 2:30pm	Session 5 — ML for Remote Sensing & Satellite Retrievals offsite link Speakers: Nicholas Elmer, Somnath Luitel, Shuyan Liu, Tyler Gardner, Ying-Chieh Chen Nicholas Elmer (Arete): AI data fusion for high-resolution atmospheric characterization Somnath Luitel (Western Kentucky University): AirCast-SR: A Diffusion Based Foundation Model for Kilometer-Scale Atmospheric Super-Resolution Shuyan Liu (CISESS/STAR): Enhancing MiRS ATMS Precipitation Retrievals through Machine Learning: Development, Evaluation, and Operational Transition Tyler Gardner (CIRES / NOAA): Improving Space Weather Imagery: A Machine Learning Approach to Removing Earthshine Artifacts in CCOR-1 Data Ying-Chieh Chen (The University of Iowa): Retrieve Nighttime Cloud Microphysical Parameters from VIIRS Observations: A Physics-Informed Transformative Machine Learning Approach
2:30pm – 3:00pm	Break offsite link
3:00pm – 4:30pm	Session 6 — AI for Blue Economy offsite link Speakers: Brian Tate, Lin Qi, Masoud Rostami, Caitlin Allen Akselrud, Yan Chen, Shayla Fitzsimmons, Dustin Colson Leaning Lin Qi (NOAA/STAR): Mapping global floating algae blooms with deep learning method Dustin Colson Leaning (EDF & CVision AI) & Brian Tate (CVision AI): Estimating Recreational Fishing Effort with AI and Shore-Based Camera Systems Masoud Rostami (UT Arlington): TRUST-Aqua: Trustworthy AI for Aquatic Environmental Monitoring, Forecasting, and Decision Support Caitlin Allen Akselrud (NOAA-NMFS): Hidden fragility in machine learning models: the importance of a data-driven approach to forecasting messy time-series data Yan Chen & Shayla Fitzsimmons (Canadian Integrated Ocean Observing System): From Project to Community: Building Bridges through a Community of Practice

August 27, 2026 Agenda (Thursday)

8:30am – 10:00am	Session 7 — Climate, Drought, Emissions & Renewable Energy offsite link Speakers: Cenlin He, Iype Eldho, Sue Ellen Haupt, Ayesha Genz, BH Baek Cenlin He (NSF NCAR) Machine learning-based high-resolution subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction of drought and wildfire in the western United States Iype Eldho (CISESS) Characterizing Spatiotemporal Drought Regimes across CONUS Using Long-Term Daily SPI and Unsupervised Learning Ayesha Genz (NOAA) CIndRA: A Climate Indicator Report Assistant for AI-Enabled Pacific Climate Services Bok H. Baek (George Mason University) Rapid Inference of Physically-informed Top-Down NOX and NH3 Emissions using the AI-driven Inverse Model Constrained by Observations Sue Ellen Haupt (NSF NCAR) Building and Evaluating a Machine Learning Surface Layer Scheme for Offshore Wind Applications
10:00am – 10:30am	Break offsite link
10:30am – 12:00pm	Session 8 — Operationalizing AI: Institutional Frameworks & Readiness offsite link Speakers: Annarita Mariotti, Jinwoong Yoo, Stephanie Ray, Kendall Aubertot, Tobey Kegley Annarita Mariotti (NOAA OAR): AI Innovation Across NOAA Research Jinwoong Yoo (UMD/NASA GSFC): NASA CLI and NASA HPC Studio: A Multi-Agent AI Framework for Autonomous End-to-End Earth System Modeling Workflows Stephanie Ray (NWS / National Data Buoy Center): Leaning Forward: Integrating AI into NDBC Daily Routines Kendall Aubertot (TechTraverse): LLM agents, NOAA datasets, and OISS Tobey Kegley (NOAA NCEI): The NOAA Oceanographic Imagery Task Team's Feedback on ESIP's AI-Readiness Checklist
12:00pm – 1:00pm	Break offsite link
1:00pm – 2:30pm	Closing Plenary offsite link

June 18, 2026 Agenda

Time (ET)	Session Topics
11:00	Workshop Welcome (Douglas Rao, Rob Redmon)
11:10	Session 1: AI for Environmental Observations (Chair: Stephen Bieda, National Weather Service) Xiaoming Liu (NOAA/NESDIS STAR): Detection of ocean eddies from satellite ocean color and SST measurements using a deep learning approach Shardae Douglas (NOAA NCEI): ADDIS: A Hybrid Ensemble Framework for Automated Anomaly Detection in the GHCN-D Dataset Vijay Vardhan Tadimeti (Oak Ridge National Lab): AI-Ready by Design: How Modular, Data-Driven Development Enables On-the-Fly AI Functionality for Operations Zachary Medley (Oak Ridge National Lab): Metadata Summary Creation using Retrieval-Augmented Generation with a Large Language Model
13:00	Session 2: AI for Environmental Modeling (Chair: Isidora Jankov, Global Systems Laboratory) Kinya Toride (CIRES/NOAA PSL): Interpretable AI-Informed Model Analogs for Seasonal Precipitation: When and Why Optimization Adds Skill Marc Alessi (Union of Concerned Scientists/Colorado State University): Southern Hemisphere Surface Warming Drives Southwestern U.S. Precipitation according to AI-Informed Climate Model Simulations Jia Wang (NOAA OAR/GLERL): A Machine Learning Framework For Efficient Ice Cover Forecasting In The Great Lakes Leveraging Long-Term Extensive Simulation Data Ellie Hojeily (University of Albany/NOAA NCAS-M): Evaluating the Aurora Machine Learning Model Utilizing NCEP Aerosol Initial Conditions for PM2.5 Forecasting
15:00	Session 3: AI for Data Augmentation and Information Management (Chair: David Turner,* Weather Program Office)* Manoj Nair (CIRES/NOAA NCEI): Autoresearch applied to the Prompt Penetration Electric Field Model Jay Su (NOAA NESDIS/ACIO-S): Bridging Data Silos with the NESDIS Storefront: A Unified AI-Powered Access Point via the INDUS Embedding Model Andrew Fritz (NWS/National Data Buoy Center): Project Lighthouse: cloud-native AI-assisted quality control system Aaron Anderson (NWS/Norman Weather Forecast Office): Scaffolding NOAA AI Data Services: One Template, Many Domains

March 19, 2026 Agenda

Time (ET)	Session Topics
10:30	Workshop opening and welcome
10:40	Session 1: AI for Environmental Observations Chair: Hassan Moustahfid (NOAA/NOS) Informing Great Lakes Observing System Design with Convolutional Gaussian Neural Processes (Dani Jones, CIGLR) Earth Embeddings: Towards AI-centric Representations of our Planet (Esther Rolf, CU Boulder) Rapid Annotation with VIAME Using AI-Assisted Tools for Environmental Imagery (Matt Dawkins, Kitware Inc) Autonomous Tropical Cyclone Center Prediction via Computer Vision AI Models (Matthew McKinney, NESDIS/STAR)
12:15	Session 2: AI for Earth System Modeling Chair: Dan Barrie (NOAA/OAR) 4-D nowcasting of clouds and visibility with a hierarchy of model complexities (Ryan Lagerquist, ACME) Accelerating Earth System Modeling by Leveraging a Standardized Coupling Framework for Hybrid Models (Ufuk Turuncoglu, NSF NCAR) NeurOCAST: A Scalable Neural Operator Framework for Spatiotemporal Prediction (Atieh Alipour, NOS) Improving HRRR 1-h APCP with a U-Net and rain-aware sampling (Oscar Chimborazo, Howard University/NCAS-M)
14:00	Session 3: AI for Data Management and Information Services Chair: Rob Redmon (NOAA/NESDIS) Agentic AI for Near-Real-Time Ocean Hazard Assessment (Kevin Lee, UCLA/NASA JPL) SPEAR Earth System Data Assistant (Jake Zappala, OAR/GFDL) Human perspectives on building and using an Intelligent Data Exploring Assistant (IDEA) for environmental data analysis (Matthew Widlansky, University of Hawaii) From Assistants to Automation: Leveraging NOAA’s Gemini Enterprise to Modernize Portfolio Management and R2O Transition Planning (Abigail Arnold, OAR/WPO)
15:30	NOAA Leadership Fireside Chat Moderator: Monica Youngman (NOAA OCIO & NOAA/NWS) Panelists: Steve Thur (Assistant Administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and Acting NOAA Chief Scientist) Heather Kilcoyne (Director, NESDIS Office of Common Services)

Previous Workshops

7th NOAA Workshop on Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Environmental Sciences - Generative AI

NCAI hosted a series of virtual and hybrid public workshops focused on GenAI development for environmental science applications. Each event focused on different aspects of GenAI. The series concluded with a 2-day hybrid event with panels and sessions spanning topics around GenAI for environmental sciences.

6th NOAA Workshop on Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Environmental Sciences

This workshop explored collaborations on leveraging AI to align with NOAA’s strategic priorities. Groups formed around selected use cases that could be sustained after the workshop via online collaboration platforms.

Shown here are twin supercomputers Dogwood (pictured here) and Cactus are the newest additions to NOAA's weather and climate operational supercomputing system. Located in Manassas, Virginia, and Phoenix, Arizona, respectively, each supercomputer operates at a speed of 12.1 petaflops — three times faster than NOAA's former system.

5th NOAA Workshop on Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Environmental Sciences

The interactive, virtual workshop focused on collaboration building and active development of AI-powered applications and community standards. The workshop collaborated around two themes: Benchmarking Framework and Research-to-Operation-to-Research (R2O2R). September 19-21, 2023, virtual.

4th NOAA Workshop on Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Environmental Sciences

An interactive workshop to build collaboration and initiate the active development of AI-powered applications and community standards, focusing on three themes: fire weather and impacts, AI in ocean conservation, and interoperable Digital Twin Earth. September 4-9, 2022, virtual.

An illustration of binary computer code and planet earth hologram at the center.

3rd NOAA Workshop on Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Environmental Sciences

The third event continued the successes of previous workshops and encouraged participation by scientists, program managers, and leaders from the public, academic and private sectors who work in AI and environmental sciences. The theme was “Transforming Weather, Climate Services, and Blue Economy with Artificial Intelligence.” September 13-17, 2021, virtual.

2nd NOAA Workshop on Leveraging AI in Environmental Sciences

The workshop consisted of weekly events including: extended presentations, mini sessions, panel discussions, tutorials, and networking opportunities. This WiSM (Workshop in Slow Motion) took advantage of the virtual format and reserved time for the development of presentations and Q&A sessions. July 30, 2020 - February 25, 2021, virtual.

1st Workshop on Leveraging AI in the Exploitation of Satellite Earth Observations and Numerical Weather Prediction

The workshop gathered scientists, program managers, and leaders from the public, academic and private sectors. It enabled experts involved in the development and adaptation of AI tools and applications in a number of fields to meet and exchange experiences. April 23-25, 2019, College Park, Maryland.