Aurora

GlobalMRF202448 GBMicrosoftPyTorch

Aurora is a foundation model of the atmosphere from Microsoft Research: a 1.3B-parameter Swin-transformer with Perceiver-style encoders pretrained on over a million hours of diverse weather and climate data. The version scored here is the 0.25° deterministic medium-range configuration, which consumes the two most recent analysis frames (t-6h and t0) and steps forward 6 hours at a time on a 720x1440 grid (pole-padded onto ERA5's 721x1440 for verification).

Skill

Pick a metric and variable; hover for exact values at each lead time.

Evaluation

Deterministic · 24 initial conditions · 14-day horizon · 69 variables

Scores are latitude-weighted (cos φ) and aggregated over the initial conditions. Evaluation is done against ERA5 fetched from ARCO.

Type	deterministic
Initial conditions	24 (2025)
Initial condition source	ERA5 (ARCO)
Verification (ground truth)	ERA5 (ARCO)
Lead times	6 h to 14 days
Variables scored	69
Metrics	RMSE, MAE, Log spectral distance

Variables

Scored output variables (69)

Name	Description	Unit	Group
msl	Mean sea level pressure	Pa	Surface
t2m	Temperature at 2m	K	Surface
u10m	U-component (eastward, zonal) of wind at 10 m	m s⁻¹	Surface
v10m	V-component (northward, meridional) of wind at 10 m	m s⁻¹	Surface
z50	Geopotential at 50 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z100	Geopotential at 100 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z150	Geopotential at 150 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z200	Geopotential at 200 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z250	Geopotential at 250 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z300	Geopotential at 300 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z400	Geopotential at 400 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z500	Geopotential at 500 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z600	Geopotential at 600 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z700	Geopotential at 700 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z850	Geopotential at 850 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z925	Geopotential at 925 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
z1000	Geopotential at 1000 hPa	m² s⁻²	Geopotential
t50	Temperature at 50 hPa	K	Temperature
t100	Temperature at 100 hPa	K	Temperature
t150	Temperature at 150 hPa	K	Temperature
t200	Temperature at 200 hPa	K	Temperature
t250	Temperature at 250 hPa	K	Temperature
t300	Temperature at 300 hPa	K	Temperature
t400	Temperature at 400 hPa	K	Temperature
t500	Temperature at 500 hPa	K	Temperature
t600	Temperature at 600 hPa	K	Temperature
t700	Temperature at 700 hPa	K	Temperature
t850	Temperature at 850 hPa	K	Temperature
t925	Temperature at 925 hPa	K	Temperature
t1000	Temperature at 1000 hPa	K	Temperature
u50	U-component of wind at 50 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u100	U-component of wind at 100 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u150	U-component of wind at 150 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u200	U-component of wind at 200 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u250	U-component of wind at 250 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u300	U-component of wind at 300 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u400	U-component of wind at 400 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u500	U-component of wind at 500 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u600	U-component of wind at 600 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u700	U-component of wind at 700 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u850	U-component of wind at 850 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u925	U-component of wind at 925 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
u1000	U-component of wind at 1000 hPa	m s⁻¹	U wind
v50	V-component of wind at 50 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v100	V-component of wind at 100 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v150	V-component of wind at 150 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v200	V-component of wind at 200 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v250	V-component of wind at 250 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v300	V-component of wind at 300 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v400	V-component of wind at 400 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v500	V-component of wind at 500 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v600	V-component of wind at 600 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v700	V-component of wind at 700 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v850	V-component of wind at 850 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v925	V-component of wind at 925 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
v1000	V-component of wind at 1000 hPa	m s⁻¹	V wind
q50	Specific humidity at 50 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q100	Specific humidity at 100 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q150	Specific humidity at 150 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q200	Specific humidity at 200 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q250	Specific humidity at 250 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q300	Specific humidity at 300 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q400	Specific humidity at 400 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q500	Specific humidity at 500 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q600	Specific humidity at 600 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q700	Specific humidity at 700 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q850	Specific humidity at 850 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q925	Specific humidity at 925 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity
q1000	Specific humidity at 1000 hPa	kg kg⁻¹	Specific humidity

All of the model's output variables that have ERA5 verification are scored.

Data

The numbers behind the plot are in eval_scores_aurora.json, exported by the eval recipe scorecard (scorecard/export_scores.py --docs) -- one value per metric, variable and lead time, in the variable's own units.

Reproducibility

Run and environment details

Date scored	2026-08-20
Scores written	2026-08-20
GPUs	8 x NVIDIA H100 80GB HBM3 (single node)
PyTorch	2.12.0a0+0291f960b6.nv26.04.48445190
CUDA	13.2
Python	3.12.3
Repo commit	2e3d1fd9a3f3
Provenance source	run
Exported	2026-08-20
Locked dependencies	uv.lock @ 2e3d1fd9a3f3

Reference

Bodnar, C., Bruinsma, W. P., Lucic, A., Stanley, M., Brandstetter, J., Garvan, P., ... & Perdikaris, P. (2024). Aurora: A foundation model of the atmosphere. arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.13063, 1(8).