How confident should we be in a prediction of El Niño? 10 April 2026 Seasonal forecasts are fuelling headlines about El Niño, but uncertainty remains. This blog explains what the signals mean, where confidence is growing, and why caution is still essential.
Separating the signal from the noise 25 March 2026 Separating forecast errors into information and noise reveals true predictive skill, improves how weather models are evaluated, and enables fairer comparisons between traditional numerical and emerging machine learning approaches.
The AI Weather Quest: spotlighting the best of machine learning sub-seasonal prediction 13 March 2026 At the midpoint of its first competitive year, the AI Weather Quest brings together a global community advancing machine learning methods for sub‑seasonal forecasting.
Build your own probability of fire model 12 February 2026 The PoF-Toolbox is a lightweight, reproducible framework for building local machine learning probability of fire models using user-defined data, helping translate global fire signals into locally meaningful risk information.
The eye of the storm: how EarthCARE is helping to evaluate hurricane physics in ECMWF forecasts 10 December 2025 EarthCARE’s overpass of Hurricane Humberto captured the first space-based view of vertical winds and precipitation inside an eyewall, offering unprecedented insight into storm structure and updrafts that will help ECMWF improve hurricane understanding, intensity prediction and forecasts.
Simplifying AI for weather forecasting with the European Weather Cloud 24 November 2025 Rising demand for AI and ML workloads on the EWC has driven ECMWF to develop ready-made templates that democratise access by simplifying setup and lowering technical barriers. Available through the EWC Community Hub, they help users focus on science over infrastructure.
Forecasting of convective weather in Indonesia 11 November 2025 Ruth Mahubessy explores how Indonesia’s complex weather patterns challenge forecasters and how a new ECMWF–WMO Fellowship project aims to improve predictions of extreme rainfall and landspouts in the tropics.
Evaluating rainfall forecasts in Ecuador: Observations from AI and physical models 22 October 2025 WMO Fellow Angela Iza Wong explores the challenge of forecasting rainfall in Ecuador.
Getting the most out of ECMWF sub-seasonal forecasts 22 September 2025 Tim Hewson introduces a new type of forecast map which enables users to visualise the information content of sub-seasonal forecasts like never before.
The AI Weather Quest: uniting international expertise to advance sub-seasonal forecasting 18 August 2025 As the competition phase of the AI Weather Quest starts, the organisers introduce the competition framework and establish a baseline by assessing the skill of current dynamical sub-seasonal forecast models.
Small-but-mighty Arctic Weather Satellite now assimilated at ECMWF 15 August 2025 ECMWF has started operational assimilation of data from a trail-blazing small satellite launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) that provides new microwave sounding measurements from space. The new observations give a robust forecast improvement, complementing similar sensors from larger platforms.
2025 California wildfires: insights from ECMWF forecasts 05 February 2025 On 7 January 2025, a series of devastating wildfires started in Los Angeles. ECMWF, which has been producing fire danger forecasts since 2018, has been exploring new approaches to fire forecasting in recent years.
Forecasting extreme events in Ecuador 04 November 2024 The challenge of forecasting extreme events across Ecuador is the focus for Angela Iza Wong, from the Ecuador Hydrometeorological Service, during her year at ECMWF as a WMO Fellow.
Reflections on the 4th ESA-ECMWF Workshop on Machine Learning for Earth System Observation and Prediction 21 May 2024 As one of the organisers of the joint ESA-ECMWF Workshop, Massimo Bonavita discusses some of the highlights and considers the future role of machine learning for weather and climate prediction.
Machine learning ignites wildfire forecasting 06 March 2024 Joe McNorton reports on recent success in forecasting wildfires using machine learning at resolutions as high as 1 km and work to incorporate a wildfire component into ECMWF’s Integrated Forecasting System.
Heat stress and the European heatwave of 2023 03 October 2023 Claudia Di Napoli looks back at the extreme heat in parts of Europe this summer and describes her work to develop forecasts of heat stress and other weather-related health hazards.
European heatwave July 2023 19 July 2023 Europe is experiencing some of the hottest temperatures of summer 2023 so far, with parts of Greece, eastern Spain, Sardinia, Sicily and southern Italy seeing temperatures above 45°C at the start of this week.
The rise of machine learning in weather forecasting 20 June 2023 ML-based weather prediction models have developed rapidly over the last year with exciting results. A group of our scientists discuss developments and their potential implications for the future.
The strange phenomenon of large-scale cloud-clearing waves in the atmosphere 20 March 2023 While looking at kilometre-scale simulations, Philippe Lopez and Inna Polichtchouk spotted unusual cloud-free areas in the tropics which also appeared in observations. Here they describe their investigation of this large-scale cloud-clearing wave phenomenon.
