February 25, 2025 Tuesday Weather

New AIFS launched by ECMWF

Feb 25, 2025

∙ Paid

Good Afternoon!

An even better day as more sunshine warms the Lower 48 from California to North Carolina. Only a few areas of active weather. Can you feel the Spring Fever?

ECMWF Launches AIFS operational

Huge day as Europe’s weather agency launches their Artificial Intelligence Forecasting System (AIFS) into operational use. It is available 4x per day or every 6-hours, and around 12:45 PM ET for the 12z cycle.

How big of a deal is this?

Well, the computation expense to run the forecast system is the equivalent of 1-2 minutes on a consumer GPU or a few pennies instead of $80 Million for a supercomputer with 1-million cores. With a couple hours, I can show ANYONE how to run this on their own at home — not joking! You can run real-time forecasts or go back into time to re-run previous cases from 1940-2025. Hindcasts or reforecasts are going to be criticial for the extension of the A.I. forecasting process into the subseasonal / weekly time scales.

We have Snowfall!

A bunch of new variables are now provided like snowfall, 100-meter winds, and solar radiation. So let’s use it!

10-Day Upper-Level Pattern | AIFS Height Anomaly at 500 hPa

Into this weekend, we see 2 tails extend out of the main Polar Vortex anchored over Quebec —> brief but potent cold blasts into the Great Lakes and Northeast.

Mobile shortwaves out of the North Pacific continue to propagate through the Lower 48 after dipping into the U.S. Southwest. These move along quickly from coast-to-coast in a few days meaning active weather for the beginning of March — but with the Pacific influence, not extremely cold.

AIFS Precipitable Water

My favorite variable! There are 3 tropical cyclones in the Pacific east of Australia that are spinning clockwise. Note how smooth the PWAT is from the A.I. at 0.25° grid spacing. Maximum PWAT is ~3.5 inches.