It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
A startup backed by Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz plans to revive an idled copper mine in Utah to test new technology aimed at automating operations.
Mariana Minerals acquired the Centennial copper mine from Lisbon Valley Mining Co. LLC last year and will reopen it in April, according to Mariana’s chief executive officer Turner Caldwell. The small mine is part of a 10,000 acre land package that Mariana Minerals acquired, which also includes a refining facility.
The mine produced about 2,500 tons of copper a year under Lisbon Valley’s ownership, though Mariana plans to scale the output to 50,000 tons of copper cathode by 2030. The firm will deploy autonomous equipment including haul trucks and drill rigs, Caldwell said.
“There just hasn’t been a lot of mining in the US in the last 50 years, partly because we don’t have the people to design and operate these assets,” said Caldwell, who spent about a decade at Tesla Inc. managing the automaker’s battery minerals unit before founding Mariana Minerals.
The reopening is the latest example of mining firms looking to revive idled US operations as metal prices climb and the Trump administration pushes to onshore critical minerals. BHP Group and Faraday Copper Corp. are exploring a deal to restart a historic copper mine in Arizona, while Blue Moon Metals Inc. acquired a defunct germanium and gallium mine in Utah from Teck Resources Ltd. in February.
The closely held firm was among several commodity companies that went to Venezuela last week as part of US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s visit to revive oil and mineral production in the South American country.
Mariana closed a Series A funding round in June 2025 backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
(By Jacob Lorinc)
Peru approves environmental study for $3.4B Buenaventura copper project
The Trapiche deposit is an open pit copper project located in the district of Juan Espinoza Medrano, Antabamba province. Credit: Buenaventura
Peru on Wednesday approved an environmental study for Buenaventura, one of Peru’s largest mining firms, to proceed with its southern Trapiche copper project with an estimated investment of $3.4 billion, the Andean nation’s state certification office said.
The environmental certification office SENACE said the evaluation of the detailed environmental impact study “guarantees the development of activities under high sustainability standards” in Peru’s Apurimac region.
SENACE noted that while the study’s approval is an essential step, it does not in itself authorize the miner to begin operations.
Peru is the world’s third-largest copper producer. Regulators in the South American country require other permits including a construction license before miners can begin extracting ore.
Executives at Buenaventura, which owns several gold and silver mines across the country, have said Trapiche should become one of the company’s most important copper projects when it becomes operational after 2030.
Buenaventura also owns close to 20% of Cerro Verde, one of Peru’s largest copper deposits. The mine there is run by US-based miner Freeport McMoRan.
(By Marco Aquino; Editing by Aida Pelazez-Fernandez)
Breaking the Nuclear Taboo
In addition to the widening of the war on Iran to the whole Middle East and beyond, this conflict risks deliberate use of nuclear weapons.
President Trump has been on quite a roll. Since just the beginning of the year, he has kidnapped the Venezuela president, threatened to invade Greenland and Colombia, and has in just the last week dragged the U.S. – and seemingly much of the Middle East – into a new war by joining with Israel to attack Iran, something that even the biggest hawks among recent U.S. presidents have managed to avoid. That’s on top of bombing seven countries in 2025.
The 2024 campaign promises of a peace president who will end the forever wars have evaporated, only to be replaced by unrestrained use of military force and a seeming disdain for diplomacy. As the U.S. comedy show Saturday Night Live put it, Trump, along with his UN-replacing Board of Peace, got “bored of peace.”
Breaking international law seems to be a feature, and not a bug, of Trump’s actions, consistent with his admission that he is expressly not guided by international law, norms, traditions, or common decency, but by “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Trump’s power-drunk top advisors are just as out of control. Secretary of War Pete “kill them all” Hegseth stated that his goal is to “unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy” and to “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.” At the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State “little Marco” Rubio bemoaned the end of the era of colonialism and called for returning to “the West’s age of dominance.” Deputy chief of staff Stephen “Genghis” Miller declared, “We live in a world… that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
In addition to hegemonic actions in the conventional military realm, Trump has been escalating when it comes to nuclear weapons. He rejected President Putin’s invitation to extend the New START treaty for another year, making possible an unconstrained nuclear arms race alongside an ongoing modernization race. He has also announced that the U.S. will resume nuclear testing. Even without the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and tensions with China, these actions and threats would be destabilizing and dangerous.
Trump is the mean and out-of-control bully on the global playground. Except that this bully has the sole authority to launch thousands of nuclear warheads.
It would be the ultimate expression of Trump’s unbounded power for him to break the one remaining international taboo – which, despite far too many close calls, has persisted for more than 80 years – detonating a nuclear weapon. There are many indications that, despite the U.S. and Israel’s ability to bomb Iran at will, this war may not be going well for them. But that need not be the pretext for using a nuclear weapon. In Trump’s mind, the more unprovoked, outrageous, and unnecessary something is, the better. Given his fragile ego and rapidly deteriorating mental powers – going off on bizarre rants about poisonous snakes in Peru or the White House drapes – the more unhinged he is, the more he thinks it demonstrates his dominance.
Since the end of the Cold War, many people who pay attention have worried about an accidental or a miscalculated stumble into nuclear war. But with Trump breaking every taboo domestically and internationally, demonstrating that he is above the law and can do as he pleases at every turn, the ultimate taboo waiting to be broken is the nuclear one. This may in fact be part of the reason why Presidents Putin and Xi have muted their response to the attacks on Iran. They know how dangerous Trump is and they don’t want to provoke him.
There are now reports from Air Force veteran Mikey Weinstein, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, that his organization has received calls from more than 200 soldiers on over 50 military bases, that “have one damn thing in freaking common… the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new ‘biblically-sanctioned’ war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘end times’ as vividly described in the New Testament book of Revelation.” The commander of one combat unit told non-commissioned officers “that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that President Donald Trump was ‘anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.’”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned in June that we were “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.” We might be a lot closer than even she realized.
Ivana Nikolić Hughes is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Columbia University. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group to the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Peter Kuznick is Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, D.C. He is also the author of numerous books and co-author (with Oliver Stone) of The Untold History of the United States.
Gay Muslim influencer hosts inclusive Ramadan meal and calls for acceptance across faiths
BERLIN (AP) — The 33-year-old German with Palestinian and Lebanese roots — who goes by @alifragt or “Ali asks” on Instagram — has a quickly growing following on Instagram, where he draws attention to the difficulties of living as a young, queer Muslim and calls for more tolerance and inclusiveness.
Gay Muslim influencer Ali Darwich, center left, hosts an inclusive Iftar, the Ramadan fast-breaking meal, with friends who are Muslim, Christian, queer and straight, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
BERLIN (AP) — Ali Darwich, a gay Muslim influencer in Berlin, picks up a date from his plate, takes a sip of water, and addresses the 15 friends sitting around the table and breaking the Ramadan fast with him.
The 33-year-old German with Palestinian and Lebanese roots — who goes by @alifragt or “Ali asks” on Instagram — has a quickly growing following on Instagram, where he draws attention to the difficulties of living as a young, queer Muslim and calls for more tolerance and inclusiveness.
“Tonight we want to send a message that no matter where a person comes from, no matter who that person loves, no matter how queer that person is, they cannot be too queer … because they are exactly as they should be,” Darwich says, smiling at the diverse group of Muslims and Christians, Germans and immigrants, gay and straight people sharing this meal with him as the sun sets over Berlin.
“I am a believer, I believe in God, and I find Islam beautiful, just like Christianity or Judaism and many other religions,” he says. But he adds that it’s not always easy for homosexuals to be accepted — not just for Muslims but also for queer Christians and believers of many other religions.
Indeed, attacks against LGBTQ+ people and gay-friendly establishments are rising across Germany, including in Berlin, a city that has historically embraced the community.
According to the latest figures from 2024, there was a 40% increase in violence targeting LGBTQ+ people in 12 of Germany’s 16 federal states as compared to 2023, according to the Association of Counseling Centers for Victims of Right-Wing, Racist and Antisemitic Violence. Darwich calls for inclusion of homosexual Muslims
In one of his Instagram videos, Darwich sits by himself on a table during Ramadan and talks about the loneliness some Muslim homosexuals face when they are shunned by their families. It makes life hard, he says, especially during holidays that are usually a time of togetherness.
He calls on people to open their hearts and doors to queer Muslims so they don’t have to be alone for Iftar, the evening meal during Ramadan.
And for his gay followers he also has a message on Instagram: “You deserve to break your fast surrounded by people who accept you — fully and without conditions.”
Darwich’s coming out a few years ago wasn’t easy.
When he told his mother about it, she at first didn’t want to believe him, then she cried and they didn’t talk for half a year. Many other members of his extended family also were taken aback.
“From one day to the next, I was no longer invited. Not only to Ramadan, but also to family celebrations, and that was a very difficult time for me,” he told The Associated Press in an interview this week. Friends stepping up when your family shuns you
While Darwich and his mom are getting along just fine now, he said it helped him tremendously at the time that his friends stepped up and became a kind of family for him, supporting and accepting him.
For this week’s “real life” Iftar in Berlin, his friend Randa Weiser, 40, a German-Palestinian influencer who shares her everyday life with three kids and husband on social media under the handle @randa_and_the_gang, has opened her home for Ali and his and her friends.
She cooked up a feast of freekeh soup, fragrant yellow rice with almonds, raisins and cardamon, grilled chicken drumsticks, and a variety of sweets for desserts.
“It’s an absolute colorful mix tonight,” she said referring to the crowd around the Iftar table. While most people are German, many of their families originally come from faraway places like Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco, Turkey, Chechnya and Syria, Iran and Peru.
Weiser said she got “some hate” on Instagram when she posted earlier in the day that she was about to host an inclusive Iftar, but mostly, she says her followers agree that “you can be Muslim and gay or lesbian.”
As the crowd — many of them influencers as well — dug into Weiser’s food, they didn’t miss an opportunity to shoot video of one another and post it quickly on their accounts.
One of them, Darwich’s good friend Haidar Darwish, a belly dancer and artist who came from Syria in 2016, had dressed up for the occasion with a red fez and a white, gold-embroidered gallabiyah.
“The hate and crimes against women, Muslim people, Jewish people also, and queers and trans siblings of mine have increased,” said Darwish, who goes by @thedarvishofficial on Instagram.
“But no matter how much the others will show us hate, we can show more love only if we are believing in ourselves,” he said, adding that they will be fine as long as they have “the help of our allies and friends and people that have our backs.”
The Chinese cable that could trip up Chile’s new leader
Chile's new President Jose Antonio Kast faces a delicate balancing act in trying to maintain close ties both with China, Chile's biggest trading partner, and the United States, which is asserting its dominance in the region - Copyright AFP Javier TORRES
Paulina ABRAMOVICH
Chile’s new president Jose Antonio Kast faces a tough choice in his first weeks in office.
Will he bow to US pressure to nix a project to link China and Chile across the Pacific via an undersea fiber optic cable?
Or will Kast, who took office Wednesday, revive an initiative cherished by Chile’s biggest trading partner, at the risk of incurring Washington’s wrath?
The Chile-China Express would carry data nearly 20,000 kilometers (over 12,000 miles) under the sea from Hong Kong to the port of Valparaiso, allowing Beijing to reduce its dependence on internet routes that pass through North America.
But it has become entangled in the intense rivalry between Washington and Beijing for influence in Latin America.
The US State Department has called it a threat to regional security in what it calls “our hemisphere.”
Chile’s then-transport minister in January approved the project, which was proposed by state-owned China Mobile.
But two days later the government abruptly rescinded its approval, amid pressure from Washington.
The United States sanctioned three Chilean officials, including the transport minister, over the project — a rare rebuke of one of the United States’ closest Latin American allies.
A Chinese cable “basically leaves the United States unable to see what is happening” in regional data traffic, telecommunications expert Jonathan Frez, a professor at Diego Portales University in Santiago, told AFP.
It would allow China to connect directly with Latin America, including fellow BRICS member Brazil, Frez added, referring to a grouping of major emerging economies.
Kast faces a delicate balancing act in trying to reconcile Chile’s trade ties with China with his desire to deepen links with Trump, who hosted the Chilean at his “Shield of the Americas” summit in Florida last week.
The cable project created friction between Kast and his left-wing predecessor Gabriel Boric in the final days of Boric’s presidency.
Kast accused his predecessor of withholding information about the cable and suspended cooperation with Boric on the handover of power for several days.
– ‘A warning’ –
Kast is Chile’s most right-wing president since the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, elected on a promise to crack down on organized crime and irregular migration.
Washington is interested in supporting Kast on those issues, which are central to the Trump presidency, but also in “denying China access to resources and markets,” Gilberto Aranda, an international relations expert at the University of Chile, told AFP.
He saw the sanctioning of Chilean officials as “a warning” to the incoming Kast administration.
To avoid confrontation with either superpower, Chile should develop new markets, Aranda advised.
China is the main destination for Chilean exports.
In 2025, Chile sold more than $38 billion worth of products to China, primarily copper, cherries, and lithium.
– Tech hub –
Chile is hooked up to at least three international undersea cables, all connected to North America.
Successive governments of the right and left have positioned the country, which has the world’s sixth-fastest internet speeds, according to Speedtest Global Index, as a tech hub.
The 14,800-kilometer Humboldt cable, currently being built between Valparaiso and Sydney, will be the first between South America and the Asia-Pacific.
It is being developed in partnership with Google.
Experts cited by Chile’s Diario Financiero financial daily predicted that if the Chile-China Express cable was jettisoned by Santiago, Beijing would likely take it to Peru, the second-largest recipient of Chinese investment in Latin America.
Friday, March 13, 2026
Pew awards fellowships to seven scientists advancing marine conservation
Leading researchers join esteemed global community of fellows
PHILADELPHIA— The global ocean faces major threats—from illegal fishing to vanishing coastal habitats to plastic pollution. Now, a new cohort of scientists will work to bridge the knowledge gaps hindering effective ocean protections.
The Pew Charitable Trusts announced today that seven fellows—based in Australia, the United States, Canada, Japan, and Thailand—will receive $150,000 grants over three years to pursue conservation-focused research aimed at strengthening ocean health and the communities that depend on it. Their work includes tracing illegal and unreported fisheries with advanced genetic techniques, improving reef restoration in Southeast Asia, mapping climate resilient kelp forests, testing local-based incentives for marine conservation, rethinking fisheries governance in East Asia, analyzing the impacts of harmful algal blooms, and developing open-source technology to classify nanoplastic pollution.
This year’s fellows’ cohort also includes the first recipient of the Pew-Gerstner Fellowship in Ocean Plastics Research, which supports research on solutions to marine plastic pollution; and the second recipient of the Pew-Hoover Fellowship in Marine and Biomedical Science, which fosters innovative research at the intersection of the two fields.
“These fellows are tackling some of the ocean’s toughest challenges with creativity and immense dedication,” said Leo Curran, project director for the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation. “Their work shows what’s possible when science, technology, and communities come together to protect our seas.”
The 2026 fellows join a distinguished community of more than 200 Pew marine fellow alumni dedicated to advancing ocean science and promoting the sustainable use of marine resources. The Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation supports midcareer scientists and other experts selected by an international panel of leaders in marine science and conservation. Alumni form an active community that promotes collaboration and knowledge sharing worldwide.
“Seeing these scientists turn their ideas into action is what excites me most,” said Angela Bednarek, Pew’s director of scientific advancement. “They’re exploring new approaches, testing innovative tools, and working closely with communities and policymakers, bringing research to life in ways that could shape how we care for the oceans.”
The 2026 fellows are:
Suchana Apple Chavanich, Ph.D. Chulalongkorn University, Thailand Suchana Apple Chavanich will develop and apply innovative methods to advance reef restoration in Southeast Asia, a region with some of the world’s richest coral diversity. Working in Thailand, Chavanich will refine techniques for producing new corals through sexual propagation and banking frozen coral sperm and eggs—critical methods for preserving the genetic health of restored populations.
Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor, Ph.D. Simon Fraser University, Canada Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor will develop a replicable framework to identify the social connections that shape markets in the ocean economy, facilitating the design and implementation of local-scale incentives for conservation. Working with three fishing communities in Sonora, Mexico, Cisneros-Montemayor will apply this framework, conducting field interviews and community engagement workshops to map and understand the layered interactions that influence economic decision-making.
Win Cowger, Ph.D. Pew-Gerstner Fellow in Ocean Plastics Research Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research, United States Win Cowger will enhance the capabilities of Open Specy, an open-source tool he developed to help researchers worldwide classify and analyze different types of plastic pollution. He will build a robust reference library and develop new algorithms to improve the identification of nanoplastics, small microplastics, and plastic leachates in the marine environment.
Nur Arafeh-Dalmau, Ph.D. University of Queensland, Australia Nur Arafeh-Dalmau will collaborate with partners in California, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina to identify and map resilient kelp forest ecosystems. Using satellite imagery, ecological surveys, and environmental DNA, Arafeh-Dalmau will analyze biodiversity patterns in persistent kelp forests and test their resilience to marine heat waves.
Matthew Gribble, Ph.D. Pew-Hoover Fellow in Marine and Biomedical Science University of California, San Francisco, United States Matthew Gribble will apply an advanced statistical technique called a hidden Markov model to better understand the dynamics of toxin-producing algal blooms. His work will focus on southeast Alaska, where Alaska Native communities have been repeatedly affected by harmful algal blooms, and Andalucia, Spain. Gribble will determine how often areas have been exposed to algal blooms in the past, supporting insights into the health effects of harmful algal toxin exposure.
Shaili Johri, Ph.D. Stanford University, United States Shaili Johri will use advanced genetic tools to strengthen seafood traceability and combat illegal fishing. By analyzing fine-scale differences in individual animals’ DNA, her research will help pinpoint the geographic origins of traded species. Focusing on reef sharks, Johri will develop low-cost, rapid, and accurate genetic and visual identification methods to identify shark fishing hot spots across the Western Indian Ocean and detect instances of illegal fishing.
Namhee Kwon, Ph.D. Kansai University, Japan Namhee Kwon will analyze the effectiveness and limitations of existing agreements in managing shared fish stocks, with the goal of identifying institutional and legal reforms that are both politically viable and ecologically sustainable. Focusing on agreements among South Korea, Japan, and China, Kwon will examine the legal architecture of each agreement, obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and implementation of these agreements within each country’s domestic system.
The results are in! ECMWF’s AI Weather Quest concludes latest period
Competitors in the AI Weather Quest use AI techniques to create sub-seasonal weather predictions, a forecasting time range that bridges the gap between long and short-term forecasts, that is vital for enabling regions to prepare for extreme weather events such as cyclones and cold spells.
The teams, which span 15 countries, then wait for real-life weather events unfold, to see how accurate their forecasts turned out to be.
The competition, organised by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), is designed to increase collaboration and innovation in sub-seasonal weather predictions because it is notoriously hard to forecast in this time window, due to complex interactions in the atmospheric circulation.
Sub-seasonal forecasts, unlike seasonal forecasting, predict conditions within a specific period of a season, helping to indicate when communities will be affected. They can also refine predictions from large continental areas to much more specific regional locations than seasonal forecasts.
For example, while seasonal forecasts may indicate an increased chance of cyclones in broad regions of the Indian Ocean, sub-seasonal forecasts can predict risk at a more specific regional level, such as north-west Madagascar. Similarly, instead of predicting an elevated risk of cold conditions across all of Europe, sub-seasonal forecasts may highlight a higher likelihood of winter hazards at a country-level, e.g. France, during a particular period.
This improved level of detail helps communities get resources to the right places and to take action, such as through preparing for evacuation, reinforcing homes, or stocking up on food.
During the contest, which has attracted 42 teams in its first competitive year, participants submit sub-seasonal forecasts every week and are scored on how accurate their models turned out to be. The weekly scores are then displayed live on the AI Weather Quest website and aggregated for each 13-week competition period.
Today ECMWF reveals that the winning team of the latest period, December 2025 to February 2026 (DJF 2025/26), is MicroEnsemble.
The team, led by Microsoft, and comprised of scientists with strengths in meteorology, engineering, statistics, and AI were the most consistent performer for each weather variable across temperature, mean sea-level pressure and precipitation. Their approach uses AI technologies to post-process state-of-the-art dynamical forecasts from ECMWF.
Speaking on behalf of the team, Lester Mackey, a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, said:
"Tackling the AI Weather Quest has been an exhilarating process and a valuable learning experience in improving probabilistic forecasts. We believe our success comes from assembling a stellar team with complementary strengths in meteorology, engineering, statistics, and AI and a common passion for building solutions that benefit society. We will continue to improve our sub-seasonal forecasting techniques and look forward to collaborating with ECMWF and other sub-seasonal AI developers."
The leaderboard remains close at the top, with MicroEnsemble finishing just above LP, a China-based team who finished in second place for forecasting three weeks ahead and third place for forecasting four weeks ahead. ECMWF’s own team finished in third place for forecasting three weeks ahead and fourth place for forecasting four weeks ahead.
All three teams have demonstrated the rapid progress of both post-processing and purely data-driven approaches, and these will continue to evolve in the next periods of the competition as teams refine their models through this real-time benchmarking process.
Lu Peng, a Senior Engineer from Jiangsu Climate Center speaking on behalf of the LP team, said:
“I’m very grateful to ECMWF for such a valuable opportunity to test ideas in an environment close to real-world forecasting. Our simple approach to precipitation prediction required fewer than 100 lines of additional code and runs in less than ten seconds on a normal computer without a GPU. It shows valuable experiments can happen with relatively simple tools, accessible to many. Working with participants from different backgrounds who share strong expertise and enthusiasm, allows us to work toward developing the next generation of forecasting systems.”
While most submissions come from Europe, China, and the United States, teams from Niger, Morocco, Kenya, South Africa, Peru, and South Korea have also entered, reflecting the increasingly global reach of AI/ML approaches to forecasting.
Kenyan-based team Fahamu have consistently submitted forecasts and led the way in using Anemoi technologies to enable operational sub-seasonal forecasting in a developing country.
“AI Weather Quest provides a unique opportunity for operational forecasting centres, researchers, and practitioners working on weather and climate to explore jointly, how emerging AI methods can complement and extend traditional weather prediction systems. This collaboration is essential if we want AI-driven weather and climate forecasting to become part of operational early warning systems that benefit communities on the ground. For our team in East Africa, reliable sub-seasonal forecasts are essential for improving early warning systems and supporting anticipatory action for hazards such as droughts and floods. AI Weather Quest allows us to test how AI-based ensemble prediction systems can be translated into actionable information for decision-makers.”
ECMWF’s own team in the contest applied the Artificial Intelligence/Integrated Forecasting System (AIFS) and is currently the best ranked purely data driven model, i.e. not using outputs from traditional physics-based weather models as inputs.
Jakob Schloer, Scientist for data-driven sub-seasonal forecasting at ECMWF and lead of the AIFS-team for the Weather Quest, said:
“The AI Weather Quest gives us a great opportunity to put different versions of our AIFS model to the test in real time already at an early development stage. This is both exciting and genuinely fun for the team. We're happy that AIFS has established itself as the best-performing purely data-driven model in the competition. But what makes it especially valuable is the chance to see how other teams are tackling the same challenge — particularly those combining traditional numerical methods with machine learning. Ultimately, we all learn from each other, and that pushes the whole field forward.”
The competition, funded by the European Union through the Destination Earth initiative, and endorsed as a WMO Integrated Processing and Prediction System (WIPPS) pilot project of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is now at the midway point of its first edition. Olga Loegel, User Outreach and Engagement Associate at ECMWF, and lead of the AI Weather Quest organisation, concluded:
“The AI Weather Quest is not only a transparent benchmark for evaluating how artificial intelligence performs for sub-seasonal weather prediction; it is also a global learning framework. Our collaborative approach of bringing together researchers, meteorological services, and industry from ECMWF Member and Co-operating States and the international community, creates a shared space to exchange insights on where and how AI can improve forecasts. It is key to building robust scientific evidence, strengthening trust in new methods, and ultimately improving forecasts that support decision-making worldwide. Everyone in the competition, regardless of their position, is contributing to this aim.”
On Thursday 19 March a webinar will feature some of the top contenders, who will present their results. You can sign up here: https://events.ecmwf.int/event/486/
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