AI for atmosphere–ocean sciences: advancements, challenges and ways forward

TL;DR

This paper reviews how AI is transforming weather and ocean sciences, from better forecasts to new hybrid models that combine AI with physics.

Contribution

The paper introduces a vision for hybrid physics–AI models and autonomous AI agents to advance Earth science understanding and adaptation.

Findings

AI outperforms traditional models in weather and climate forecasting accuracy and efficiency.

Hybrid physics–AI models are proposed to ensure generalizability and causal consistency.

AI can improve early-warning systems and green energy production through better data analysis.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming Earth science, offering unprecedented capabilities to tackle the most pressing challenges in the field. This work explores significant advances and emerging challenges across the AI for atmosphere–ocean sciences, while outlining critical ways forward. We review deep-learning methods and their application in weather and climate forecasting, which outperforms dynamical models in accuracy and computational efficiency. The role of AI in detecting complex phenomena, enhancing data assimilation and reconstruction, bias correction and downscaling coarse model outputs is also examined. However, the ‘black-box’ nature of complex AI models necessitates a focus on explainable AI to build trust and extract mechanistic insight. The most promising path forward is identified as the development of hybrid physics–AI modeling, which integrates the data-driven power of AI with the foundational constraints of physical laws to ensure generalizability and causal consistency. A new framework for AI-based model intercomparison is essential for rigorous benchmark performance. Finally, we contextualize these technical developments by discussing the usefulness and applicability of AI to society, including the improvement of multi-hazard early-warning systems and green energy production. We conclude by envisioning the future of AI agents for Earth science—autonomous, goal-oriented systems capable of designing and running experiments, generating and testing hypotheses, and learning dynamics from multisource data. This synthesis underscores that AI is not merely a tool, but a paradigm shift, which will significantly improve how we understand and adapt to a changing climate.

This review explores how AI is transforming atmosphere-ocean sciences, from improved forecasts to trustworthy hybrid systems. It outlines a paradigm shift toward autonomous AI agents that could one day drive scientific discovery.

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