8th NOAA AI Workshop: Full Schedule

8th NOAA AI Workshop (Details)

8:30am MDT

Opening plenary

Tuesday August 25, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am MDT

TBA

Tuesday August 25, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am MDT
TBA

Plenary

10:00am MDT

Break

Tuesday August 25, 2026 10:00am - 10:30am MDT

TBA

Tuesday August 25, 2026 10:00am - 10:30am MDT
TBA

Break

10:30am MDT

Session 1 — AI Weather & Climate Emulation

Tuesday August 25, 2026 10:30am - 12:00pm MDT

TBA

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

Speakers

Marco Tedesco

Nicholas Lutsko

Piyush Garg

Lead AI Weather Scientist, Commodities, Point72 Asset Management

I'm an AI weather scientist who came up through observational atmospheric science, spent a few years building the models, and now spends most of my time on the question of whether they hold up when someone has to make a real decision from them.My PhD (Illinois, with Steve Nesbitt... Read More →

Spencer Clark

Ayoub Ghriss

Tuesday August 25, 2026 10:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA

Thematic

12:00pm MDT

Break

Tuesday August 25, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT

TBA

Tuesday August 25, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA

Break

1:00pm MDT

Session 2 — Convection-Allowing & High-Impact Weather Forecasting

Tuesday August 25, 2026 1:00pm - 2:30pm MDT

TBA

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

Speakers

Corey Potvin

Adam Clark

Isidora Jankov

Nanette Hosenfeld

NOAA /NWS/CBRFC

I'm a meteorologist who has worked for the federal government for almost 20 years. I'm currently the Senior Hydrometeorologist at the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center in Salt Lake City, where I specialize in flood forecasting, water supply predictions, and developing decision-making... Read More →

Austin Park

Tuesday August 25, 2026 1:00pm - 2:30pm MDT
TBA

Thematic

2:30pm MDT

Break

Tuesday August 25, 2026 2:30pm - 3:00pm MDT

TBA

Tuesday August 25, 2026 2:30pm - 3:00pm MDT
TBA

Break

3:00pm MDT

Session 3 — LLMs, Agents & Trust in the Weather Enterprise

Tuesday August 25, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm MDT

TBA

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

Speakers

Nikhil Manakkal

Eric Allen

Meteorologist, NWS/ERH/SSD

NWS Eastern Region Headquarters - Scientific Services Division
Contact: [email protected]

I am passionate about connecting science with technology and integrating those advancements into operations.

Personal GitHub: https://github.com/allenea

... Read More →

Daniel Nietfeld

Research Meteorologist and Proving Ground Specialist, CSU/CIRA

I am a Research Meteorologist and Proving Ground Specialist with CSU/CIRA, with an extensive background and expertise in leading people and programs aimed at improving the weather enterprise, with wide-ranging experience in forecast and warning operations, R&D, management, leadership... Read More →

Ryan Walsh

Jessica Chen

Deeder Aurongzeb

Tuesday August 25, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm MDT
TBA

Thematic

8:30am MDT

Plenary - Users Perspective

Wednesday August 26, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am MDT

TBA

Wednesday August 26, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am MDT
TBA

Plenary

10:00am MDT

Break

Wednesday August 26, 2026 10:00am - 10:30am MDT

TBA

Wednesday August 26, 2026 10:00am - 10:30am MDT
TBA

Break

10:30am MDT

Session 4 — Data Discovery, Metadata & Knowledge Tools

Wednesday August 26, 2026 10:30am - 12:00pm MDT

TBA

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

Speakers

Matthew Widlansky

Jonathan Mote

Zachary Medley

Chirag Shah

Kevin Lee

Wednesday August 26, 2026 10:30am - 12:00pm MDT
TBA

Thematic

12:00pm MDT

Break

Wednesday August 26, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT

TBA

Wednesday August 26, 2026 12:00pm - 1:00pm MDT
TBA

Break

1:00pm MDT

Session 5 — ML for Remote Sensing & Satellite Retrievals

Wednesday August 26, 2026 1:00pm - 2:30pm MDT

TBA

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

Speakers

Nicholas Elmer

Somnath Luitel

Shuyan Liu

Tyler Gardner

Ying-Chieh Chen

Wednesday August 26, 2026 1:00pm - 2:30pm MDT
TBA

Thematic

2:30pm MDT

Break

Wednesday August 26, 2026 2:30pm - 3:00pm MDT

TBA

Wednesday August 26, 2026 2:30pm - 3:00pm MDT
TBA

Break

3:00pm MDT

Session 6 — AI for Blue Economy

Wednesday August 26, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm MDT

TBA

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

Speakers

Brian Tate

Lin Qi

Masoud Rostami

Associate Professor, University of Texas at Arlington

Caitlin Allen Akselrud

Yan Chen

Shayla Fitzsimmons

Dustin Colson Leaning

Wednesday August 26, 2026 3:00pm - 4:30pm MDT
TBA

Thematic

8:30am MDT

Session 7 — Climate, Drought, Emissions & Renewable Energy

Thursday August 27, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am MDT

TBA

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

Speakers

Cenlin He

Iype Eldho

Ayesha Genz

Bok H. Baek

Sue Ellen Haupt

Senior Scientist, NCAR

As a Senior Scientist at NCAR, I do research in boundary layer meteorology, artificial intelligence / machine learning applications, meteorology for renewable energy, and large scale atmospheric dynamics. I am Past Commissioner of the AMS Commission on the Weather, Water, and Climate... Read More →

Thursday August 27, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am MDT
TBA

Thematic

10:00am MDT

Break

Thursday August 27, 2026 10:00am - 10:30am MDT

TBA

Thursday August 27, 2026 10:00am - 10:30am MDT
TBA

Break

10:30am MDT

Session 8 — Operationalizing AI: Institutional Frameworks & Readiness

Thursday August 27, 2026 10:30am - 12:00pm MDT

TBA

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

Speakers