The ninetieth UQSay seminar on UQ, DACE and related topics will take place online on Thursday afternoon, November 20, 2025.
2–3 PM — Fanny Lehmann (ETH AI Center, ETH Zurich)
Foundation Models of the Earth System: Seeing Beyond Weather
Deep learning has revolutionized weather forecasting over the past three years, with AI models surpassing the accuracy of traditional numerical simulations at a fraction of the computational cost. In this talk, I will present how these models—and specifically, foundation models—can be extended beyond weather forecasting. I will show that the latent space of foundation models is sufficiently rich to predict new physical variables with minimal, lightweight fine-tuning. I will also explore the conditions under which some foundation models remain indefinitely stable for long autoregressive predictions, challenging the common belief that such models inevitably accumulate errors to the point of blow-up. These findings open new perspectives for applying AI models to climate projections and quantify uncertainties in climate change scenarios.
References:
Joint work with the SwissAI Initiative team for Weather and Climate.
Organizing committee: Pierre Barbillon (MIA-Paris), Julien Bect (L2S), Nicolas Bousquet (EDF R&D), Vincent Chabridon (EDF R&D), Amélie Fau (LMPS), Filippo Gatti (LMPS), Clément Gauchy (CEA), Bertrand Iooss (EDF R&D), Alexandre Janon (LMO), Sidonie Lefebvre (ONERA), Didier Lucor (LISN), Sébastien Petit (LNE), Emmanuel Vazquez (L2S), Xujia Zhu (L2S).
Coordinators: Sidonie Lefebvre (ONERA) & Xujia Zhu (L2S)
Practical details: the seminar will be held online using Microsoft Teams.
If you want to attend this seminar (or any of the forthcoming online UQSay seminars), and if you do not already have access to the UQSay group on Teams, simply send an email and you will be invited. Please specify which email address the invitation must be sent to (this has to be the address associated with your Teams account).
You will find the link to the seminar on the "General" UQSay channel on Teams, approximately 15 minutes before the beginning.
The technical side of things: you can use Teams either directly from your web browser or using the "fat client", which is available for most platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac, Android & iOS). We strongly recommend the latter option whenever possible. Please give it a try before the seminar to anticipate potential problems.
