Gordon Research Conference on 2025 Machine Learning for Actionable Climate Science; Smithfield, Rhode Island; June 2025

This award supports a Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on the use of Machine Learning (ML) for climate and earth system modeling. The conference will be held over five days in June 2025 at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. Topics to be covered in the conference include: developing hybrid (physics+ML) Earth system models with greater fidelity; addressing climate extremes through large ensembles generated with ML-based emulators; using ML to enhance detection and attribution methods; and advancing ML-based techniques for climate model analysis and benchmarking.

Motivation for the conference comes from the explosion of interest in ML in recent years and the potential of ML as a tool for improving weather prediction and climate projections. The conference provides an opportunity for practitioners working adopting ML-based tools for climate and earth system research to share results and jointly develop research agendas.

The GRC has scientific broader impacts by bringing together researchers at the interface of ML and climate/earth system modeling. It also serves an educational purpose for the students and early career scientists whose participation is supported under this award. The conference also serves to strengthen and democrate the US AI innovation ecosystem, a key priority for NSF.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.