Reliable forecasting of the Earth system is essential for mitigating natural disasters and supporting human progress. Traditional numerical models, although powerful, are extremely computationally expensive. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have shown promise in improving both predictive performance and efficiency, yet their potential remains underexplored in many Earth system domains. Here we introduce Aurora, a large-scale foundation model trained on more than one million hours of diverse geophysical data. Aurora outperforms operational forecasts in predicting air quality, ocean waves, tropical cyclone tracks and high-resolution weather, all at orders of magnitude lower computational cost. With the ability to be fine-tuned for diverse applications at modest expense, Aurora represents a notable step towards democratizing accurate and efficient Earth system predictions. These results highlight the transformative potential of AI in environmental forecasting and pave the way for broader accessibility to high-quality climate and weather information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reliable forecasting of the Earth system is essential for mitigating natural disasters and supporting human progress. Traditional numerical models, although powerful, are extremely computationally expensive. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have shown promise in improving both predictive performance and efficiency, yet their potential remains underexplored in many Earth system domains. Here we introduce Aurora, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"1180","msr_page_range_end":"1187","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"641","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_mag_id":"","msr_pubmed_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_s2_match_type":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_published_date":"2025-5-21","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"","msr_journal_url":"","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_year":0,"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_s2_match_confidence":0,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":true,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":null,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13556],"msr-publication-type":[193715],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[268251,246685],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[268308],"msr-impact-theme":[264846],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-1039116","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-locale-en_us","msr-field-of-study-atmospheric-and-oceanic-physics","msr-field-of-study-machine-learning"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2025-5-21","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"641","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-09005-y","label_id":"243109","label":0},{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2405.13063","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[{"id":1039119,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Aurora__A_Foundation_Model_of_the_Atmosphere.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Cristian Bodnar","user_id":42696,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Cristian Bodnar"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Wessel Bruinsma","user_id":42339,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Wessel Bruinsma"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Ana Lucic","user_id":42480,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Ana Lucic"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Megan Stanley","user_id":41482,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Megan Stanley"},{"type":"text","value":"Anna Allen","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Johannes Brandstetter","user_id":41874,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Johannes Brandstetter"},{"type":"guest","value":"patrick-garvan","user_id":686985,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=patrick-garvan"},{"type":"text","value":"Maik Riechert","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Jonathan Weyn","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Haiyu Dong","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Anna Vaughan","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Jayesh Gupta","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Kit Thambiratnam","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Alex Archibald","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Chun-Chieh Wu","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Elizabeth Heider","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Max Welling","user_id":41155,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Max Welling"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Richard Turner","user_id":42687,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Richard Turner"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Paris Perdikaris","user_id":43110,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Paris Perdikaris"}],"msr_impact_theme":["Computing foundations"],"msr_research_lab":[851467],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[606351],"msr_project":[1045410],"publication":[],"video":[],"msr-tool":[1133995],"msr_publication_type":"article","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":1045410,"post_title":"Aurora Forecasting","post_name":"aurora-forecasting","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2024-08-15 01:11:31","post_modified":"2025-09-16 05:31:58","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/aurora-forecasting\/","post_excerpt":"A flexible 3D foundation model of the atmosphere. Aurora, developed by a team of Microsoft researchers, is a cutting-edge AI foundation model that can extract valuable insights from vast amounts of atmospheric data. This 1.3 billion parameter model excels at a wide range of prediction tasks, even in data-sparse regions or extreme weather scenarios. Aurora is a large-scale deep learning model that can predict global weather patterns and atmospheric processes like air pollution. It is…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/1045410"}]}}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1039116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1039116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1145123,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1039116\/revisions\/1145123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publisher?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=1039116"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=1039116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}