TAME Extreme Weather and Wildfires Act
This bill, titled the Transformational Artificial intelligence to Modernize the Economy against Extreme Weather and Wildfires Act (TAME Extreme Weather and Wildfires Act), would significantly expand the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s use of artificial intelligence to forecast weather, water, and space weather, and to improve how forecasts and related information are disseminated. Key elements include creating and curating comprehensive AI-ready training datasets, developing global and regional AI-based weather models, exploring AI-assisted information delivery, and strengthening public-private partnerships to accelerate adoption. The bill also envisions open public access to certain AI models and related data, subject to safeguards for national security, intellectual property, and other legal protections. It would fund these activities with multi-year appropriations and require regular reporting to Congress on progress and security considerations. Overall, the bill aims to modernize NOAA’s forecasting capabilities via AI, foster collaboration with researchers and industry, and improve hazard readiness and decision-making across communities. It also creates mechanisms to balance advancing innovation with security, privacy, and legal constraints, and to assess the impacts of AI weather models on the broader weather enterprise.
Key Points
- 1Training datasets and AI-ready infrastructure: Within four years, the Under Secretary of NOAA must develop and curate comprehensive weather forecasting training datasets (with Earth system data, quality information, and provenance metadata), using existing federal Earth system reanalysis datasets to speed development.
- 2AI weather models (global and regional) and dissemination: The Under Secretary may develop and test a global AI-based weather model using NOAA data, and may also experiment with regional/local AI weather models; the bill also authorizes exploring AI to improve how weather and wildfire risks are communicated to the public.
- 3Public availability with safeguards: The plan would require making operational AI weather models and non-operational AI weather models (and their documentation) publicly available at no cost, while imposing safeguards to protect national security, IP, trade secrets, contracted data, and the Administration’s mission.
- 4Partnerships, assessment, and expert input: The bill encourages partnerships with private sector, academic, and international entities; it supports best practices development with standards bodies and research institutions; it calls for independent studies to assess AI weather models’ impacts on the weather enterprise; and it supports technical assistance to forecasters, emergency managers, and other stakeholders.
- 5Funding and oversight: The bill authorizes specific appropriations (e.g., $105 million for FY2026 and $25 million annually for FY2027–FY2030) to carry out these activities, and requires periodic reporting to Congress on progress, risks, and security implications, including a formal assessment of risks posed by access to weather data by foreign countries of concern.