# Microsoft Research — Aurora 1.5: Extending open foundation models for weather and Earth-system applications

- Company: Microsoft Research (microsoft.com)
- Announced: 2026-07-09T16:46:22+00:00
- Category: model-update
- Subject: Research / Phi
- Open weights: yes
- Models affected: Aurora 1.5, Aurora
- License: open source
- Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/aurora-1-5-extending-open-foundation-models-for-weather-and-earth-system-applications/
- Record: https://forck.live/items/2459-aurora-1-5-extending-open-foundation-models-for-weather-and-earth-system

Microsoft Research announced Aurora 1.5, a major update to the open Aurora Earth-system foundation model, adding 22 new weather variables, hourly temporal resolution, and probabilistic ensemble forecasting. The model is released as open source on GitHub with model checkpoints on Hugging Face.

## Evidence

Verbatim from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/aurora-1-5-extending-open-foundation-models-for-weather-and-earth-system-applications/:

> Aurora 1.5 is a major extension of Microsoft’s Aurora Earth System foundation model that adds 22 more weather variables relevant to energy, agriculture, transport, and climate risk, along with hourly temporal resolution and probabilistic ensemble forecasting. Released as open source on GitHub with model checkpoints on Hugging Face

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Record: https://forck.live/items/2459-aurora-1-5-extending-open-foundation-models-for-weather-and-earth-system
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