Joshua Fu, Chancellor’s Professor, John D. Tickle Professor, and James G. Gibson Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is one of only seven experts who represent the World Meteorological Organization programs to join the WMO’s Research Board Task Team on Artificial Intelligence for Weather Forecast (TT-AI4Wx).
WMO is the United Nation system’s voice on the state and behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere, its interaction with air, land, and oceans, the weather and climate it produces, and the resulting distribution of water resources. The organization provides the framework for international cooperation for its 193 member states and territories.
TT-AI4Wx will be developing an interim plan to leverage existing WMO program activities to help address immediate questions on AI/machine learning (AI/ML) on weather timescales for UN member countries that can be expanded in an agile fashion to address the rapidly changing landscape of AI/ML technology and applications related to the spectrum of research, infrastructure, operation, and services.
“The purpose of this team forming is because a lot of the private sector is already working on it, so the WMO’s weather and climate forecast needs to speed up,” Fu said. “Google, Amazon, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and others already have weather forecast tools that work by AI, so we can’t get behind. It’s an international priority.”
The focus of Fu’s work includes AI applications on climate change impacts on energy infrastructure, air pollution, water availability, weather outlook, negative carbon sequestration, extreme events like heatwaves, floods, drought, and human health.
Fu has served as the vice chair of the Measurement Model Fusion for the Global Total Atmospheric Deposition (MMF-GTAD) of the WMO. He’s excited to expand his contributions to WMO and help chart the international course for the future of AI for weather forecast and climate prediction.
“I am very honored to serve in this role and represent the University of Tennessee at the world level,” Fu said. “This is a very important role that I play in there, and I will need to go to Geneva very often for meetings. I am looking forward to it.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)