NASA and IBM AI Partnership with Open Science for Climate Change Research

NASA’s commitment to climate change research has taken a significant step forward with its recent collaboration with IBM Research to create an artificial intelligence (AI) geospatial foundation model by using open science principles. This initiative not only empowers NASA’s climate studies but also opens doors for researchers worldwide.

The AI geospatial foundation model, developed in 2023, is trained on NASA’s Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) data, offering a versatile base for a wide range of AI-driven studies tackling environmental challenges. Following open science principles, freely accessible to all researchers, this model serves as a versatile tool for various applications, from detecting burn scars to delineating flood water and classifying land use categories.

Foundational models act as a baseline from which scientists can develop specific applications to address unique challenges. Manil Maskey, NASA’s data science lead, compares them to a Swiss Army Knife, providing adaptability and efficiency for diverse tasks. Already, the model has been fine-tuned to detect burn scars, delineate floodwaters, and classify various land uses, showcasing its versatility.

Through a commitment to open science, NASA and IBM Research ensure transparency and accessibility, allowing researchers to utilize the model’s capabilities to their fullest extent. This collaboration highlights the power of partnership, with NASA contributing scientific knowledge and data while IBM provides computing power and AI expertise.

Following the geospatial foundation model’s success, NASA and IBM are extending their partnership to create a new model focused on weather and climate studies. 

In collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, NVIDIA, and various universities, this new model will use the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) dataset, covering atmospheric reanalysis data from 1980 to the present day.

The ultimate goal is to combine various foundation models to create a “digital twin” of Earth, providing unparalleled analysis and predictions for climate and environmental events. 

As NASA and IBM continue to push the boundaries of AI in Earth science, their dedication to open science ensures that their research is accessible to all, fostering groundbreaking discoveries and contributing to a better understanding of our planet’s health.

For more information about open science at NASA, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/open-science

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