TAME Extreme Weather and Wildfires Act

Summary#

This bill directs the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (NOAA) to use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve weather forecasting and wildfire-related products. It requires NOAA to develop and curate comprehensive training datasets, test and possibly build AI-based global weather models, and keep supporting traditional numerical weather models and observations. The bill also creates a fire environment modeling program to detect, predict, and forecast fire behavior and smoke. It authorizes contracts, cooperative institutes, public-private and academic partnerships, technical assistance for non-Federal AI weather models, workforce development, and public release of data and code under open licenses while allowing protections for national security and certain intellectual property.

What it means for you#

• NOAA will work to build and share large, AI-ready datasets for weather and fire modeling.
• The agency may develop AI weather models and tools to improve forecast speed and impact-based decision support for communities, emergency managers, and responders.
• There may be new partnerships with universities and private companies and more technical support for forecasters using AI models.
• Some models, data, or code could be made freely available under open licenses, but releases may be limited to protect national security, trade secrets, or other legal restrictions.

Expenses#

No publicly available information.

Proponents' View#

The bill’s stated goals are to modernize forecasting by using AI, advance understanding of weather and wildfires, improve warnings and preparedness for at-risk communities and responders, accelerate innovation through partnerships, and make training data and tools available to support better forecasts and decision making.

Opponents' View#

No publicly available information.