Ver-AI Reading 2026

Ver-AI workshop on Verification of AI-Based Meteorological Forecasts, Reading 2026

Global medium range meteorological forecasting models based on methods from machine learning, with training data provided by various reanalysis experiments, have seen rapid development over the last few years. In terms of simple and overall measures of skill such as mean square errors, AI-based forecasts clearly show very promising skill, but proper and in-depth assessment of these models and the quality of their forecasts is still very incomplete. Following on from the successful VerAI workshops in 2024 and 2025, we want to continue with the discussion about how to carry out such assessments. For instance while there is a well established methodology for verification of meteorological forecasts, it is not clear to what extent this methodology needs to be adapted or modified for AI based models. The workshop will allow plenty of opportunity for discussion, in particular (but not limited to) focus points, to be announced soon.

Dates, Times: 22nd of June, 12 noon to 23rd of June, 4.30pm

Venue: Sutcliffe Lecture Theatre, Brian Hoskins Building, University of Reading.

Speakers: (PDF of full programme available here.)

Britta Seegebrecht (DWD)

Dominique Brunet (Environment and Climate Change Canada)

Hannah Christensen (University of Oxford)

Helen Buttery (Met Office)

Llorenç Lledó (ECMWF)

Louis Frey (MeteoSwiss)

Mehzooz Nizar (University of Reading)

Nicholas Loveday (Bureau of Meteorology)

Pedram Hassanzadeh (University of Chicago)

Sebastian Buschow (Jülich Supercomputing Centre)

Sebastian Lerch (Marburg University)

Sylvia Bohnenstengel (Met Office)

Zhongwei Zhang (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)

Zied Ben Bouallegue (ECMWF)

Registration:

The VerAI workshop will run back-to-back with the Bridging-the-Gap workshop. Registration is now closed.

Travel Information:

The Brian Hoskins building (aka Meteorology building) is building No 58 on this map of UoR Whiteknights campus. An excellent bus service runs from Reading station to Whiteknights campus with the Line 21 "Claret".

Sponsors:

Presented by the Centre for the Mathematics of Planet Earth at the University of Reading; this workshop is made possible through financial support from the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Organisers:

Jochen Bröcker (University of Reading), Romain Pic (ETH Zürich). Administrative Contact: Guannan Hu (University of Reading).