Stephen Bieda, Acting Deputy Director, NOAA Center for AI, NOAA

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) manages hundreds of petabytes of environmental data while generating terabytes of ocean, satellite and weather observations each month. NOAA’s Center for AI Acting Deputy Director Stephen Bieda explained how the agency is preparing that information for artificial intelligence.

At the 2026 AWS Summit in Washington, D.C., Bieda said NOAA is modernizing its data management and forecasting capabilities to make current and future data sources more accessible and usable for chatbots and other AI systems. He pointed to new directives that are driving NOAA’s effort to deliver AI-ready data.

Bieda said NOAA ultimately aims to serve as a trusted, highly accessible source of environmental data for government agencies, the insurance industry and the public. The agency is integrating information from a wide range of channels — including traditional media, social media, livestreams, phone calls and SMS — and using AI to make those disparate data sources interoperable to improve situational awareness during extreme weather events.

Check out our full coverage of the conference.