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At least 613 records · Page 34

Data-driven closure modeling for hypersonic turbulent flows

The Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations remain a workhorse technology for simulating compressible fluid flows of practical interest. Due to model-form errors, however, RANS models can yield erroneous predictions that preclude their use on mission-critical problems. This report summarizes work performed from FY22-FY24 focused on improving RANS models for hypersonic flows using data-driven modeling and scientific machine learning. In this work we: 1. Investigate the current capabilities of RANS models in Sandia’s parallel aerodynamics and re-entry code (SPARC) for hypersonic flows with a focus on shock boundary layer interactions (SBLIs), 2. Assess several established corrections that exist in the literature aimed at improving predictions for SBLIs, 3. Develop improved models for the Reynolds stress tensor using tensor-basis neural networks, 4. Develop a neural-network-based variable turbulent Prandtl number model to reduce errors in wall heating in SBLIs. 5. Begin future investigations including employing the LIFE framework to improve wall heating predictions in SBLIs as well as the ensemble Kalman filter. We find that current RANS models in SPARC are deficient for complex SBLI flows. In particular, no current model jointly predicts wall heat flux, wall shear stress, and wall pressure with reasonable accuracy. Existing corrections help, but do not alleviate this issue altogether. The development of improved models for the Reynolds stress tensor via tensor-basis neural networks results in more predictive RANS models across a suite of low-speed and high-speed cases. For hypersonic boundary layers, the inclusion of the wall-normal Reynolds stress via TBNNs has an appreciable impact on the wall-normal momentum balance and wall quantities. However, we find that improvements to the Reynolds stress tensor do not address the over-prediction in wall heat flux in SBLIs. We find that a neural-network-based variable turbulent Prandtl number model systematically and substantially improves wall heating predictions for a range of SBLI cases.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Machine-learning-based estimates of global natural vegetated wetland methane emissions (2000–2025)

Wetlands are the largest natural source of atmospheric methane (CH 4 ), yet comprehensive global budgets are typically delayed by years, preventing a timely understanding of CH 4 sources, sinks, and trends. To reduce this delay, we present a model emulator-driven framework and accompanying workflow that enable timely, continuous emission updates using a machine-learning emulator to reconstruct spatially explicit monthly emission fields at 1° × 1° resolution. We apply this framework to a global dataset of natural vegetated wetland CH 4 emissions to extend the most recent Global Methane Budget (GMB; Saunois et al., 2025) record that covers the 2000–2020 emissions through 2025. In the test data (∼ 30 % of the total dataset), the emulator achieved a global R 2 of 0.65 ± 0.003 (mean ± 95 % CI, hereafter) and an RMSE of 5.49 ± 0.12×10 -3 Tg CH 4 yr −1 . The emulator is trained on 35 GMB model estimates, including 22 process-based models and 13 atmospheric inversions, paired with 10 ensemble realizations of 11 gridded climate predictor variables from atmospheric reanalyses. Our results show that the global mean predicted wetland CH 4 emissions for 2021–2025 (157.8 ± 2.4 Tg CH 4 yr −1 ) are not significantly higher (∼ 0.05 Tg CH 4 yr −1 ) than the 2000–2020 baseline. However, this stability masks a significant hemispheric redistribution of emissions. We detect an increase in Northern Hemisphere (NH) emissions in 2021–2025, with mid- and high-latitudes increasing by 0.76 ± 0.07 and 0.35 ± 0.03 Tg CH 4 yr −1 , respectively, while the tropics and Southern Hemisphere (SH) extratropics show offsetting negative trends (−0.95 ± 0.19 and -0.11 ± 0.02 Tg CH 4 yr −1 , respectively). The predicted emissions are able to capture the low emissions in 2023 in South America linked to El Niño-related drought, as reported by recent studies (Ciais et al., 2026; Quinn et al., 2025). Furthermore, we identify a distinct seasonal amplification of global emission trends that peaks in late boreal summer. This new modeled dataset and operational framework bridge the gap between the latest updated budgets and low-latency monitoring, providing a scalable capacity to frequently update global emission estimates and critical early warnings of regional wetland feedback loops. The data are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18870108 (Li et al., 2026).

Li, Mengze [National University of Singapore (Sing↗

A localized ensemble of approximate Gaussian processes for fast sequential emulation

More attention has been given to the computational cost associated with the fitting of an emulator. Substantially less attention is given to the computational cost of using that emulator for prediction. This is primarily because the cost of fitting an emulator is usually far greater than that of obtaining a single prediction, and predictions can often be obtained in parallel. In many settings, especially those requiring Markov Chain Monte Carlo, predictions may arrive sequentially and parallelization is not possible. In this case, using an emulator procedure which can produce accurate predictions efficiently can lead to substantial time savings in practice. In this paper, we propose a global model approximate Gaussian process framework via extension of a popular local approximate Gaussian process (laGP) framework. Our proposed emulator can be viewed as a treed Gaussian process where the leaf nodes are laGP models, and the tree structure is learned greedily as a function of the prediction stream. The suggested method (called leapGP) has interpretable tuning parameters which control the time‐memory trade‐off. One reasonable choice of settings leads to an emulator with a training cost and makes predictions rapidly with an asymptotic amortized cost of .

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Uncovering Structure–Conductivity Relationships in Anion Exchange Membranes (AEMs) Using Interpretable Machine Learning

Anion exchange membranes (AEMs) play a vital role in the performance of water electrolyzers and fuel cells, yet their discovery and optimization remain challenging due to the complexity of structure–property relationships. In this study, we introduce a machine learning framework that leverages conditional graph neural networks (cGNNs) and descriptor-based models and a hybrid graph neural network (HGARE) to predict and interpret ionic conductivity. The descriptor-based pipeline employs principal component analysis (PCA), ablation, and SHAP analysis to identify factors governing anion conductivity, revealing electronic, topological, and compositional descriptors as key contributors. Beyond prediction, dimensionality reduction and clustering are performed by employing t-SNE and KMeans as well as SOM, which reveal distinct membranes clusters, some of which were enriched with high anion conductivity. Among graph-based approaches, the graph convolutional (GCN) achieved strong predictive performance, while the Hybrid Graph Autoencoder-Regressor Ensemble (HGARE) achieved the highest accuracy. Additionally, atom-level saliency maps from GCN provide spatial explanations for conductive behavior, revealing the importance of polarizable and flexible regions. This work contributes to the accelerated and data-driven design of high-performance AEMs.

Naghshnejad, Pegah [Department of Chemical Enginee↗

Unraveling the Dynamics of Nucleosome Arrays

The organization of genomic DNA into chromatin is a fundamental determinant of genome stability, regulation, and cellular function. Nucleosomes, the basic repeating units of chromatin, assemble into higher-order structures whose organization and heterogeneity remain difficult to characterize using conventional ensemble-averaged techniques. A key need in the field is the development of experimental approaches capable of directly visualizing nucleosome assemblies and their structural variability at the single-molecule level. This LDRD Lab-Wide project focused on establishing and evaluating atomic force microscopy (AFM)–based approaches for the characterization of nucleosome assemblies. The work emphasized experimental workflows for preparing, imaging, and assessing multi-nucleosome systems, rather than isolated single nucleosomes. Through method development and exploratory measurements, the project demonstrated the feasibility of applying scanning probe microscopy to investigate chromatin-relevant assemblies and provided preliminary insight into the strengths and limitations of this approach for future quantitative studies. Results and lessons learned from this effort were disseminated to the broader scientific community through multiple national conference presentations, helping to position LLNL for continued work in chromatin and genome organization research.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Physics-Infused AI/ML Based Digital-Twin Framework for Flow-Induced-Vibration Damage Prediction in a Nuclear Reactor Heat Exchanger

This report summarizes some of the ongoing work related to the development of an expert-elicitation-digital-twin framework for real time damage state prediction in heat exchanger components of a nuclear reactor. The framework is targeted towards predicting damage associated with coupled low cycle fatigue (associated with regular heat-up, cool-down and power operation transients) and high cycle fatigue (associated with flow induced vibration transients). The overall framework will be based on a NoSQL based database, physics-infused-geometry-dependent virtual-sensor data, different AI/ML techniques-based data-driven-predictive-model applications (Apps) and real-time plant sensor measurements available through few existing sensors. Towards this overall goal, this report updates some of the ongoing work, such as on implementation of a NoSQL Database (such as MongoDB), FE based heat transfer analysis of a heat exchanger (e.g. of a PWR steam generator) for generating geometry-dependent virtual sensor data and evaluation of various AI/ML models such as based on multivariate linear regression, ensembled decision-tree based Random-Forest and Gradient-Boosting regression and high-dimensional-kernel-function-transformation based Support-Vector-Machine regression models. The AI/ML models were evaluated for predicting multi-time-series thermal states at thousands of 3D point-clouds

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Modeling freight mode choice using machine learning classifiers: a comparative study using Commodity Flow Survey (CFS) data

This study explores the usefulness of machine learning classifiers for modeling freight mode choice. We investigate eight commonly used machine learning classifiers, namely Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machine, Artificial Neural Network, K-Nearest Neighbors, Classification and Regression Tree, Random Forest, Boosting and Bagging, along with the classical Multinomial Logit model. US 2012 Commodity Flow Survey data are used as the primary data source; we augment it with spatial attributes from secondary data sources. The performance of the classifiers is compared based on prediction accuracy results. The current research also examines the role of sample size and training-testing data split ratios on the predictive ability of the various approaches. In addition, the importance of variables is estimated to determine how the variables influence freight mode choice. The results show that the tree-based ensemble classifiers perform the best. Specifically, Random Forest produces the most accurate predictions, closely followed by Boosting and Bagging. With regard to variable importance, shipment characteristics, such as shipment distance, industry classification of the shipper and shipment size, are the most significant factors for freight mode choice decisions.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Toward machine-learning-assisted PW-class high-repetition-rate experiments with solid targets

We present progress in utilizing a machine learning (ML) assisted optimization framework to study the trends in a parameter space defined by spectrally shaped, high-intensity, petawatt-class (8 J, 45 fs) laser pulses interacting with solid targets and give the first simulation-based overview of predicted trends. A neural network (NN) incorporating uncertainty quantification is trained to predict the number of hot electrons generated by the laser–target interaction as a function of pulse shaping parameters. The predictions of this NN serve as the basis function for a Bayesian optimization framework to navigate this space. For post-experimental evaluation, we compare two separate neural network (NN) models. One is based solely on data from experiments, and the other is trained only on ensemble particle-in-cell simulations. Reviewing the predicted and observed trends across the experiment-capable laser parameter search space, we find that both ML models predict a maximal increase in hot electron generation at a level of approximately 12%–18%; however, no statistically significant enhancement was observed in experiments. On direct comparison of the NN models, the average discrepancy is 8.5%, with a maximum of 30%. Since shot-to-shot fluctuations in experiments affect the observations, we evaluate the behavior of our optimization framework by performing virtual experiments that vary the number of repeated observations and the noise levels. Here, we discuss the implications of such a framework for future autonomous exploration platforms in high-repetition-rate experiments.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Source-agnostic gravitational-wave detection with recurrent autoencoders

Abstract We present an application of anomaly detection techniques based on deep recurrent autoencoders (AEs) to the problem of detecting gravitational wave (GW) signals in laser interferometers. Trained on noise data, this class of algorithms could detect signals using an unsupervised strategy, i.e. without targeting a specific kind of source. We develop a custom architecture to analyze the data from two interferometers. We compare the obtained performance to that obtained with other AE architectures and with a convolutional classifier. The unsupervised nature of the proposed strategy comes with a cost in terms of accuracy, when compared to more traditional supervised techniques. On the other hand, there is a qualitative gain in generalizing the experimental sensitivity beyond the ensemble of pre-computed signal templates. The recurrent AE outperforms other AEs based on different architectures. The class of recurrent AEs presented in this paper could complement the search strategy employed for GW detection and extend the discovery reach of the ongoing detection campaigns.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Natural Language Processing for Text Based Event Extraction: Identifying Events of Interest Related to Worldwide State-Sponsored Civil Nuclear Power

Beginning in FY20, SRNL was funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Defense Nuclear Non-Proliferation Research and Development to develop a prototype natural language processing/natural language understating machine learning-based modeling and analysis pipeline to extract and forecast events of interest from massive open data sources. The working hypothesis within the approach is that contextual shifts in key words and phrases act as indicators of events of interest over time. Therefore, by identifying points in time where contextual shifts occur, events of interest can be extracted along with explicit and implicit connections of entities and activities. The development of the preliminary prototype pipeline proved successful, meriting further testing of the pipeline on more broad topical domains and in a worldwide data environment. Therefore, SRNL, in collaboration with the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics at Virginia Tech, have continued development with a test case of identifying events of interest related to worldwide state-sponsored civil nuclear power in open data sources. In the first year of this follow-on effort, the team has curated domain-specific data corpuses using an automated scheme and applied the modeling and analysis pipeline. This robust, focused, and efficient approach consists of an ensemble of analyses applied to time dependent word embedding models that are trained on the data corpuses. In this report, the team has demonstrated the capability of the existing pipeline (as development has continued in parallel) by exploring several specific case-studies centered around Rosatom’s international activities regarding the planning, construction, operation, and/or shutdown of nuclear reactors. A basic timeline events has been generated by manually cataloging known “milestone” events that have occurred at reactors in Turkey, Finland, Hungary, and Egypt and compared with the output of the modeling pipeline. In this approach, the team has characterized the lead time using the prototype pipeline, as well as the ability to capture relevant information, which proved 100% successful. A deep dive example of the Akkuyu reactor (Turkey) is presented that shows the breadth of information that can be captured using the approach. In this case study, events were extracted pertaining to the planning/construction of Akkuyu including protests from the population, information campaigns in response to the protests, forged regulatory documents and lawsuits, budgetary/shareholder information, geopolitical tensions, and the various construction milestones. This has demonstrated the pipeline’s utility as a research aid or real-time event extraction tool, where summary-level information and detailed text extractions from millions of articles or Tweets across long time periods can be generated with significantly less effort than current techniques.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Learning from GES DISC's MLS and OMI Data Users: Metrics Matter

It has been over 15 years since Aura research satellite launched in 2004 to observe the Earth's ozone layer, air quality, and climate from four different instruments - the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS), the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS), the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES). Observations from the Aura mission have established a concrete understanding of the changing chemistry of our atmosphere.The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) is the official archive and distribution center for the HIRDLS, MLS, and OMI instruments. This presentation will report metrics of data usage and services on these instruments. Key to GES DISC's mission to provide better data support is gaining a better understanding of our users' needs and behaviors as they discover, access and utilize these data. We will summarize the users' needs from these instruments based on user inquiry information collected over the Aura mission lifetime and present findings from this ensemble metrics.

Metrics↗

Multitask graph neural networks for elastoplastic response prediction in dual-phase polycrystals

Microstructure-sensitive prediction of elastoplastic response remains a recurring bottleneck in multiscale damage and fatigue modeling, where large ensembles of statistically distinct polycrystals are required to quantify variability and extreme-value behavior. In this work, we develop a multitask graph neural network (GNN) surrogate that maps dual-phase ferrite–martensite polycrystal microstructures to Statistical Volume Element (SVE)-level elastoplastic Quantities of Interest (QoIs). Each SVE is represented as a grain-adjacency graph, with node features encoding phase, geometry, and crystallographic orientation, and edge features encoding relative misorientation. A message-passing graph convolution generates node embeddings, which are pooled into a graph representation and passed to a multitask regression head that jointly predicts 10 scalar QoIs and vector-valued stress–strain responses in orthogonal loading directions across multiple martensite volume fractions and SVE sizes. Results show high accuracy for scalar QoIs and strong agreement for full stress–strain trajectories, with population envelopes reproducing both median behavior and finite-SVE variability across compositions and partition scales. A unified model trained on pooled volume-fraction data preserves most within-regime accuracy relative to regime-specific models while also capturing the broader cross-regime variation reflected in the pooled test set. Distributional comparisons further demonstrate that the surrogate preserves heterogeneity under SVE partitioning, enabling statistically consistent block-wise random-field construction for mesoscale analyses. Overall, the proposed grain-graph surrogate provides a practical pathway to accelerate ensemble-based studies of SVE-level constitutive variability in dual-phase polycrystals.

Crystal plasticity↗

Prediction of DIII-D Pedestal Structure from Externally Controllable Parameters

The sharp increase of pressure at the edge of a high confinement mode (H-mode) plasma, the pedestal, strongly impacts overall plasma performance. Predicting the pedestal is a necessity to control and optimize tokamak operations. An experimental data-driven machine learning (ML) approach is presented that predicts the pedestal heights and widths of electron density (ne) and electron temperature (Te) profiles as well as the separatrix ne from externally controllable parameters such as the plasma shape, heating method and power, and gas puff rate and integrated gas puff. The OMFIT framework was used with DIII-D data to efficiently, robustly, and automatically build a database of pedestal parameters to train machine learning models. Database creation was enabled by the search engine tool for DIII-D data, TokSearch, which parallelizes data fetching, enabling fast searches through basic signals of thousands of DIII-D shots and selection of relevant time intervals. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) separated the database into three clusters that represent classes of plasma shapes that are regularly used in DIII-D. The most important parameters for setting the pedestal structure were plasma current (Ip), toroidal magnetic field (Bφ), neutral beam heating power (PNBI) and shaping quantities. The Deep Jointly Informed Neural Networks (DJINN) algorithm was applied to identify suitable neural network (NN) architectures that appropriately capture the features of the pedestal database. Separate NNs were implemented for each pedestal parameter, and ensembling methods were used to improve the prediction accuracy and allowed estimation of the prediction uncertainty. The pedestal predictions of the test dataset lie within the measurement uncertainties of the pedestal parameters. The NN outperformed simple Linear Regression (LR) analysis, indicating non-linear dependencies in the pedestal structure. The presented achievements illustrate a promising path for future research, using feature extraction to infer experimental trends and thereby improve pedestal models as well as deploying NN for a fast pedestal prediction in DIII-D scenario development.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Single-Point Extrapolation to the Complete Basis Set Limit through Deep Learning

Machine learning (ML) offers an attractive method for making predictions about molecular systems while circumventing the need to run expensive electronic structure calculations. Once trained on ab initio data, the promise of ML is to deliver accurate predictions of molecular properties that were previously computationally infeasible. In this work, we develop and train a graph neural network model to correct the basis set incompleteness error (BSIE) between a small and large basis set at the RHF and B3LYP levels of theory. Our results show that, when compared to fitting to the total potential, an ML model fitted to correct the BSIE is better at generalizing to systems not seen during training. We test this ability by training on single molecules while evaluating on molecular complexes. We also show that ensemble models yield better behaved potentials in situations where the training data is insufficient. However, even when only fitting to the BSIE, acceptable performance is only achieved when the training data sufficiently resemble the systems one wants to make predictions on. As a result, the test error of the final model trained to predict the difference between the cc-pVDZ and cc-pV5Z potential is 0.184 kcal/mol for the B3LYP density functional, and the ensemble model accurately reproduces the large basis set interaction energy curves on the S66x8 dataset.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Feature Engineering and Ensemble Methods for Imbalanced ICS Intrusion Detection: Pipeline Audit and Constrained Evaluation

Industries are becoming increasingly connected and are more vulnerable to cyberattacks due to the widened attack surface. Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are among the most critical sectors that malicious actors can target, as such attacks can cause significant operational disruption and physical damage. It is imperative to detect such attacks as early as possible. This paper evaluates constraint-conditioned optimistic performance estimates for traditional ML models in ICS intrusion detection (i.e., estimates obtained under contiguous, non-shuffled temporal evaluation without test-set alteration, but with pre-split feature engineering that may introduce temporal leakage, due to dataset constraints). Our findings are threefold. First, we quantify how iterative feature engineering affects tree-based ensemble performance and examine how pipeline decisions (split strategy, sampling scope, and cleaning policy) can inflate or reduce reported IDS results under constraint-bound evaluation. Second, we compare intrinsic class-imbalance handling across ensemble models. Third, under our current pipeline constraints (including pre-split feature engineering), CatBoost achieves the best performance on Water Storage Tank (accuracy: 0.9831, class-1 F1: 0.9682), while Light- GBM achieves the best performance on Gas Pipeline (accuracy: 0.9618, class-1 F1: 0.9086).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A general spatial-temporal framework for short-term building temperature forecasting at arbitrary locations with crowdsourcing weather data

Weather forecasting has been a critical component to predict and control building energy consumption for better building energy management. Without accessibility to other data sources, the onsite observed temperatures or the airport temperatures are used in forecast models. In this paper, we present a novel approach by utilizing the crowdsourcing weather data from neighboring personal weather stations (PWS) to improve the weather forecast accuracy around buildings using a general spatial-temporal modeling framework. The final forecast is based on the ensemble of local forecasts for the target location using neighboring PWSs. Our approach is distinguished from existing literature in various aspects. First, we leverage the crowdsourcing weather data from PWS in addition to public data sources. In this way, the data is at much finer time resolution (e.g., at 5-minute frequency) and spatial resolution (e.g., arbitrary location vs grid). Second, our proposed model incorporates spatial-temporal correlation information of weather variables between the target building and a set of neighboring PWSs so that underlying correlations can be effectively captured to improve forecasting performance. Here, we demonstrate the performance of the proposed framework by comparing to the benchmark models on temperature forecasting for a building located at an arbitrary location at San Antonio, Texas, USA. In general, the proposed model framework equipped with machine learning technique such as Random Forest can improve forecasting by 50% compares with persistent model and has 90% chance to outperform airport forecast in short-term forecasting. In a real-time setting, the proposed model framework can provide more accurate temperature forecasting results compared with using airport temperature forecast for most forecast horizon. Moreover, we analyze the sensitivity of model parameters to gain insights on how crowdsourcing data from the neighboring personal weather stations impacts forecasting performance. Finally, we implement our model in other cities such as Syracuse and Chicago to test the model's performance in different landforms and climate types.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

ChemPix: automated recognition of hand-drawn hydrocarbon structures using deep learning

Inputting molecules into chemistry software, such as quantum chemistry packages, currently requires domain expertise, expensive software and/or cumbersome procedures. Leveraging recent breakthroughs in machine learning, we develop ChemPix: an offline, hand-drawn hydrocarbon structure recognition tool designed to remove these barriers. A neural image captioning approach consisting of a convolutional neural network (CNN) encoder and a long short-term memory (LSTM) decoder learned a mapping from photographs of hand-drawn hydrocarbon structures to machine-readable SMILES representations. We generated a large auxiliary training dataset, based on RDKit molecular images, by combining image augmentation, image degradation and background addition. Additionally, a small dataset of ~600 hand-drawn hydrocarbon chemical structures was crowd-sourced using a phone web application. These datasets were used to train the image-to-SMILES neural network with the goal of maximizing the hand-drawn hydrocarbon recognition accuracy. By forming a committee of the trained neural networks where each network casts one vote for the predicted molecule, we achieved a nearly 10 percentage point improvement of the molecule recognition accuracy and were able to assign a confidence value for the prediction based on the number of agreeing votes. The ensemble model achieved an accuracy of 76% on hand-drawn hydrocarbons, increasing to 86% if the top 3 predictions were considered.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Celebrating 10 Years of the Sub-Seasonal to Seasonal Prediction Project and Looking to the Future

The conference clearly demonstrated the increasing interest and growth of the scientific community working on the development and application of sub-seasonal to seasonal prediction since the start of the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP)/World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) prediction project in 2013. The conference, which was held at the University of Reading (United Kingdom), was organized into three main themes as briefly summarized below, with eleven invited talks, 74 oral contributed talks, and 101 posters. The conference also included a two-hour breakout session, wherein eight groups discussed the current state and prospect for S2S prediction, and an early career researcher event. A summary of these discussions and recommendations is presented below. The conference web page (https://research.reading.ac.uk/s2s-summit2023/) is archived at the University of Reading. Introductory comments by representatives of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) WWRP and WCRP emphasized the importance of the weather–climate linkage, targeted by S2S forecasts (from 2 weeks to a season ahead), addressing the challenges of creating “end-to-end” forecasts that encompass the entire climate-services chain from the prediction science and forecast, to the development and issuing of forecast products tailored to informing user-decisions. They also emphasized the efficacy of multi-model ensemble efforts and databases to foster collaborations internationally and between operational centres and academia. Although the WWRP/WCRP S2S project comes to an end in 2023, S2S prediction will remain an important focus for WWRP and WCRP. In WWRP, a new project called SAGE (Sub-seasonal to seasonal predictions for Agriculture and Environment) will start in 2024. Another important legacy of the S2S project will be the maintenance of the S2S database (Vitart et al. 2017) and the establishment of a WMO Lead Center for sub-seasonal prediction multi-model ensemble (LC-SSPMME) which will provide real-time multi-model S2S climate information. In two keynote presentations, Prof. Brian Hoskins (University of Reading) and Dr. Gilbert Brunet (Australian Bureau of Meteorology) discussed the potential of S2S predictability and the ongoing journey for understanding and improving these predictions. This conference was a sequel to the International Conference on Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Prediction (Robertson et al., 2014) which took place in College Park (Maryland, USA) in February 2014 to celebrate the start of the WWRP/WCRP S2S project, and to WCRP and WWRP conferences in Boulder, USA, in 2018 (Merryfield et al., 2020). A significant development compared to the previous S2S conferences was the large number of presentations on research to operation (R2O) and S2S applications and on the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) methods for S2S prediction. Some of these methods provide empirical S2S forecasts which are competitive with state-of-the-art dynamical models. Other presentations demonstrated that AI/ML can provide alternative calibration of dynamical model outputs to traditional methods. Several talks and posters highlighted the increasing use of AI/ML, including deep learning, in S2S forecast post-processing and using AI to identify higher flow-dependent skill. Finally, some presentations demonstrated the value of AI/ML methods for a better understanding of S2S sources of predictability and attribution of extreme events.

S. J. Woolnough↗