In December of 2025, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, posted a digital press release announcing that they had begun the deployment of a new set of AI-assisted forecasting models.
NOAA and the National Weather Service have been using artificial intelligence to assist them in their forecasting for decades, and now with the increase in availability of AI they have further developed their systems.
According to the press release by NOAA, they have created three new systems which respectively have increased efficiency, extended the accurate forecast length and created an entire new system which has never been seen before.
The entire new system created by NOAA is very cleverly titled the “Hybrid Global Ensemble Forecasting System,” or HGEFS for short. It merges the 61 other GEFS models into one first-of-its-kind hybrid model that is intended to take into account all uncertainties to ensure that the forecasts are as accurate as possible.
This new system was put in place to forecast the winter storm the weekend of January 24. The uncertainty calculator was put in place when many people living in the midwest got a humorous message saying that there could be “one to 16 inches of snow.”
There have been some concerns raised about the effect of these new AI systems on meteorologists’ jobs and salary. However, NOAA posted a four year plan in 2021 stating that their main goal is not to replace the human workforce, but instead to “increase proficiency in the workplace.”
