A hands-on training program bringing together meteorologists and agricultural specialists from national government services to build capacity in AI-powered weather forecasting. Participants learn to generate, evaluate, and deploy regionally tailored AI forecasts, translating cutting-edge technology into practical agricultural advisory services that can reach smallholder farmers at scale.
A capacity-building program under the AIM for Scale Weather Innovation Package — led by MBZUAI with the University of Chicago's AI for Climate initiative and partners. It helps meteorological services and ministries of agriculture in low- and middle-income countries generate their own AI-driven forecasts: localized, context-aware, and built for real decisions like when to plant, irrigate, and harvest.
Adapting AI models to local conditions — prioritizing rainfall, temperature, and extremes at the 1–10 day lead times farmers can act on.
This program: a structured curriculum enabling national services to generate and interpret AI forecasts using their own data.
Research on probabilistic and subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasting, and generalizing models across regions.
Meteorologists and agricultural specialists from national services across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Twenty meteorologists and agricultural specialists from six countries, trained across the full AI-forecasting workflow in September 2025 — highlights, outcomes, and photos.
Hands-on tutorials with AIFS, FuXi and GraphCast — benchmarking, localization, and downscaling to your region.
Turning variables and thresholds into recommendations, and communication channels for extension services.
Connecting forecasts to early-warning systems and drafting a shared concept of operations.
This year's pre-training is much more in-depth — a multi-week curriculum delivered through the Pre-Training Portal, our Moodle learning platform, combining self-paced modules with live online sessions.
For any inquiries regarding the training program or coordination, please contact Dr. Souhaib Ben Taieb (Project Lead, MBZUAI) at Souhaib.BenTaieb@mbzuai.ac.ae and Akbobek Abilkaiyrkyzy (Project Coordinator, MBZUAI) at Akbobek.Abilkaiyrkyzy@mbzuai.ac.ae.