Run AI Weather Forecast on Your Own Hardware: Launching ECMWF's AIFS 2.0
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
Hugging Face
Anemoi
PyTorch
ECMWF has open-sourced its AIFS, a data-driven weather forecasting model, but running it typically requires NVIDIA GPUs of Ampere architecture or newer. A compatibility patch now enables running AIFS Single 2.0 on any GPU or CPU, both locally and via Hugging Face Jobs. This guide explains how to leverage open weights for research, applications, and education.
ECMWF's AIFS is an AI-based global medium-range weather forecasting model that uses a data-driven approach, consuming about 1000 times less energy than traditional physics-based models. Its weights are available on Hugging Face, and it has been operational since February 25, 2025, alongside the physical IFS. The model family includes AIFS Single (deterministic, 15-day forecasts) and AIFS ENS (ensemble, 51 members). The v2 update in May 2026 added wave and snow forecasts and improved stratosphere representation. To make AIFS accessible without expensive GPUs, a compatibility patch substitutes flash-attn with PyTorch's SDPA, allowing execution on any GPU (via CUDA or Apple MPS) or CPU. The guide shows how to run AIFS Single 2.0 via Hugging Face Jobs (e.g., using t4-small flavor) or locally, with steps for setup and execution. ECMWF reports that AIFS improves tropical cyclone track forecasting by up to 20% compared to leading physics-based models and feeds data into flood warning systems.
- Abbreviations
- AIFS = Artificial Intelligence Forecasting System — Система прогнозирования на основе искусственного интеллекта
- GNN = Graph Neural Network — Графовая нейронная сеть
- GPU = Graphics Processing Unit — Графический процессор
- CPU = Central Processing Unit — Центральный процессор
- IFS = Integrated Forecasting System — Интегрированная система прогнозирования
- CUDA = Compute Unified Device Architecture — Архитектура параллельных вычислений NVIDIA
- MPS = Metal Performance Shaders — Технология Apple для вычислений на GPU
- SDPA = Scaled Dot-Product Attention — Масштабированное внимание на основе скалярного произведения
- CLI = Command Line Interface — Интерфейс командной строки
- HF = Hugging Face — Хаггинг Фейс (компания)
Source: Habr — хаб ИИ —
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