‘Weather Jiu-Jitsu’: researchers are investigating whether Microsoft’s Aurora model could be used to divert extreme weather events

A feasibility study is examining whether small, targeted disturbances are sufficient to alter Aurora’s trajectories – the first step towards the idea of controlling a chaotic system such as the atmosphere.

Chaos theory suggests that a large dynamical system can be reoriented by small perturbations, provided they are applied in the right place at the right time. On the Lorenz-63 system, we know how to confine a trajectory around only one of its two attractors. Prakriti Biswas, Kobi Abayomi and Upmanu Lall call the idea of applying this principle to extreme weather events "Weather Jiu-Jitsu", and wonder if Aurora, Microsoft's 1.3 billion parameter global atmospheric model, can be used as a test bed.

Three cautious green lights

Their results support this on the three questions asked: Aurora's trajectories react to perturbations beyond simple measurement drift, the magnitude of the necessary perturbations remains small compared to the uncertainty inherent in the model's predictions, and its latent space presents a oriented structure that responds to this type of intervention, even if it does not clearly distinguish between extreme and normal states.

The authors insist on the limited scope of the exercise: it is a feasibility diagnosis, no pilot intervention has really been tested on Aurora, and the analysis of latent space remains exploratory.