Leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and mathematics to spur innovation and novel solutions to challenges at the intersection of climate change and national security
APL engineers and scientists are building novel AI capabilities to address the emerging national security challenges arising from climate change. Visit APL’s Climate Security page to learn more about how the Lab is bringing its core competencies to bear on this critical challenge area.
Researchers in APL’s Intelligent Systems Center (ISC) are building on the Lab’s existing strengths in remote sensing and deep learning to pinpoint the sources of climate change and increase situational awareness in a rapidly changing environment. For instance, APL is characterizing global greenhouse gas emissions from the road transportation sector as part of the Climate TRACE coalition. City-level results are now available on the coalition website. APL is also detecting and forecasting Arctic sea ice to enable navigation in a rapidly changing Arctic.
ISC researchers are developing operational forecasts and tools for scientific exploration by accelerating Earth systems models. Existing physics models require extensive computational resources and can be time consuming to run, limiting the exploration of possible futures and characterization of uncertainty. We are collaborating with Earth systems researchers to develop:
ISC researchers are developing AI methods to reduce the carbon footprint of various activities while maintaining or improving effectiveness. This includes leveraging reinforcement learning to train more efficient systems for adaptive HVAC control and optimizing crop yield.
To combat climate and resource challenges, it is essential to understand and capture the complex interdependencies between different scales and areas of interest. The ISC’s approach to this problem includes using modular modeling frameworks to capture system interdependencies, applying network analysis to green power and food systems, and creating geographic overlays of Arctic infrastructure and anticipated climate changes.
