Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP)

The APAM Department is coordinating with the Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP) - an NSF Science and Technology Center (STC) that launched in 2021 to explore the intersection of Applied Mathematics, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Climate physics,  all core research areas in APAM. Multiple APAM affiliates are involved in LEAP which also provides potential research opportunities for current and future students. For more information on LEAP activities and potential research opportunities, please check out the LEAP website.

"LEAP’s primary research strategy is to improve near-term climate projections by merging physical modeling with machine learning across a continuum from expertise in climate science and climate modeling to cutting-edge machine learning algorithms. The benefits will be significant for both the climate and data sciences communities. Climate scientists and modelers struggle to fully integrate the wealth of existing datasets into their models, while machine learning algorithms have been good at emulating and interpolating but have difficulties extrapolating or predicting extremes. By combining both approaches, LEAP will trigger a significant advancement for data science algorithms applied to physical problems. LEAP will incorporate physics and causal mechanisms into machine learning algorithms for better generalization and extrapolation, while optimally using the wealth of data available to climate science, in order to better predict the future." https://leap.columbia.edu/