Will AI replace Atmospheric and Space Scientists?

Many of your tasks are within reach of AI. The role will change, so it pays to act now.

Task exposure to today's AI

53/100

High exposure

This is the occupation's typical task mix. Your own score can be up to 30 points higher or lower depending on how you work: routine share, people contact, judgment and how much you already use AI.

Get your personal score

Will AI replace Atmospheric and Space Scientists?

Not entirely. Today's AI tools can take on about 53% of the typical work in this occupation, mostly: prepare forecasts or briefings to meet the needs of industry, business, government, or other groups. The parts that stay human include: Interpret data, reports, maps, photographs, or charts to predict long- or short-range weather conditions, using computer models and knowledge of climate theory, physics, and mathematics.; Broadcast weather conditions, forecasts, or severe weather warnings to the public via television, radio, or the Internet or provide this information to the news media.; Perform managerial duties, such as creating work schedules, creating or implementing staff training, matching staff expertise to situations, or analyzing performance of offices..

People who learn to use AI for the automatable parts keep the edge. The 3-phase plan below shows where to start.

Which tasks AI can take on

The largest tasks in this occupation, their share of the working week, and how much of each today's AI tools can do.

TaskAutomatable

Prepare forecasts or briefings to meet the needs of industry, business, government, or other groups. 70%

Gather data from sources such as surface or upper air stations, satellites, weather bureaus, or radar for use in meteorological reports or forecasts.AI already used 68%

Prepare weather reports or maps for analysis, distribution, or use in weather broadcasts, using computer graphics. 62%

Broadcast weather conditions, forecasts, or severe weather warnings to the public via television, radio, or the Internet or provide this information to the news media. 50%

Interpret data, reports, maps, photographs, or charts to predict long- or short-range weather conditions, using computer models and knowledge of climate theory, physics, and mathematics. 47%

Conduct meteorological research into the processes or determinants of atmospheric phenomena, weather, or climate. 47%

+ 21 more tasks (46% of the week) in the full test.

Your human edge

Interpret data, reports, maps, photographs, or charts to predict long- or short-range weather conditions, using computer models and knowledge of climate theory, physics, and mathematics.
Broadcast weather conditions, forecasts, or severe weather warnings to the public via television, radio, or the Internet or provide this information to the news media.
Perform managerial duties, such as creating work schedules, creating or implementing staff training, matching staff expertise to situations, or analyzing performance of offices.

AI tools to try

ChatGPT / Claude for literature and writingAI research tools (e.g. Elicit, Consensus, Semantic Scholar)Copilot for data analysis code (Python, R)

Related roles

A 3-phase AI learning plan

Phase 1

Faster literature and writing

Literature search and summaries with AI, always checked against the papers.
Drafts of methods, reports and grant text.
Reference management and formatting.

Project

Use AI to summarise 20 recent papers on a forecasting topic you brief on, verify every claim against the source, and draft a 2-page literature briefing with formatted references.

Phase 2

AI for data analysis

Analysis code in Python or R written with AI help.
Visualisation and statistics explained step by step.
Reproducibility: version code and prompts.

Project

Build an AI-assisted Python script that pulls a month of METAR and radiosonde data, plots skew-T and verification statistics, and version it in Git with your prompts logged.

Phase 3

AI as a research method

Classification, extraction or modelling with AI on your data.
Validate against human labels or ground truth.
Ethics, data protection and disclosure of AI use.

Project

Train and validate an AI classifier on 500 archived radar or satellite scenes against your own hand-labelled convective/non-convective ground truth, and report accuracy plus an AI-use disclosure note.

Take the free 11-question test