On the Foundations of Earth and Climate Foundation Models
This work addresses the need for better-designed foundation models in Earth and climate sciences, but it is incremental as it focuses on defining features rather than implementing or testing a new model.
The paper tackles the problem of defining optimal features for Earth and climate foundation models to enhance their applicability in geoscientific downstream tasks, proposing eleven features for environmental- and human-centric benefits.
Foundation models have enormous potential in advancing Earth and climate sciences, however, current approaches may not be optimal as they focus on a few basic features of a desirable Earth and climate foundation model. Crafting the ideal Earth foundation model, we define eleven features which would allow such a foundation model to be beneficial for any geoscientific downstream application in an environmental- and human-centric manner.We further shed light on the way forward to achieve the ideal model and to evaluate Earth foundation models. What comes after foundation models? Energy efficient adaptation, adversarial defenses, and interpretability are among the emerging directions.