Weather4cast 2025 – Multi-task Challenges for Weather & Pollution Pattern Prediction on the Road to Hi-Res Foundation Models

The competition will advance modern algorithms in AI and machine learning through a highly topical interdisciplinary competition challenge: The prediction of hi-res rain radar movies from multi-band satellite sensors requires data fusion of complementary signal sources, multi-channel video frame prediction, as well as super-resolution techniques. To reward models that extract relevant mechanistic patterns reflecting the underlying complex weather systems our evaluation incorporates spatio-temporal shifts: Specifically, algorithms need to forecast several hours of ground-based hi-res precipitation radar from lo-res satellite spectral images in a unique cross-sensor prediction challenge. Models are evaluated within and across regions on Earth with diverse climate and different distributions of heavy precipitation events. Conversely, robustness over time is achieved by testing predictions on data one year after the training period.Now, in its fourth year, Weather4cast moves to improve forecasts world-wide on an expansive data set with over a magnitude more hi-res rain radar data, allowing a move towards Foundation Models through multi-modality, multi-scale, multi-task challenges. Accurate rain predictions are becoming ever more critical for everyone, with climate change increasing the frequency of extreme precipitation events. Notably, the new models and insights will have a particular impact for the many regions on Earth where costly weather radar data are not available. As a complementary application-specific forecasting endpoint, in 2025, for the first time, we add a pollution forecasting challenge. Join us on https://www.weather4cast.net!