Data-driven weather forecasting
Operational since Feb 2025
Europe's main forecast centre runs a machine-learned global model in its operational service.
Evidence and sources
Evidence
ECMWF's AIFS became the first data-driven model in an operational forecast service at an international centre in February 2025, with an ensemble version from July 2025. GraphCast beat the physics-based model on 90% of 1,380 verification targets, and GenCast on 97.2% of 1,320.
Still open
Certification. The Met Office's FastNet beats its global model on error metrics and is still not operational, because physical consistency has to be shown first.
At Cambridge
Aardvark Weather, the first forecast learned end to end from raw observations, was led by Richard Turner in Engineering.