June 2025

Welcome to the weather edition of the Monthly Tech-In – where it’s cloudy with a high chance of innovation.

For centuries, people have tried to predict the weather in all kinds of ways. Some gazed up to the sky for color cues, others listened to the chirping of crickets or checked to see if forest creatures were acting funny.

These signs helped them decide when to plant, when to travel, when to seek shelter.

Fast forward to today and we’ve got a whole new toolkit. Think radars, weather satellites and various remote sensors – all feeding data into supercomputers that deliver forecasts our ancestors could only dream of.

Last month, the UK’s Met Office took a big leap forward. They moved all their data processing – yes, that’s 50 billion weather observations a day – from an old on-site supercomputer to a new one in the Azure Cloud.

Since it started 170 years ago, the Met Office has been a pioneer, launching the first shipping and military forecasts, among other things. This new supercomputer gives the Met more power and tools to make better predictions over longer periods of time and push climate science forward globally.

“One big thing this new computer will allow us to do in the near future is to be able to produce 14-day forecasts with a similar kind of accuracy than we can today for seven, eight, nine days,” says Charles Ewen, the Met Office’s chief information officer.

Meanwhile, a large-scale AI foundation model known as Aurora, developed by Microsoft Research, is leveraging advances in AI to predict not just weather – which it does very well, thank you very much – but also things like air pollution and wave height.

And it can do so faster and less expensively than previous forecasting methods, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.

Aurora is designed as a foundation model for the Earth system and can be fine-tuned for a range of forecasting needs. In retrospective analyses, Aurora beat previous forecasting methods in predicting major events such as Typhoon Doksuri, which made landfall in the Philippines in July 2023, causing flooding and power outages, as well as a devastating sandstorm that slammed Iraq in June 2022.

Its early success has sparked interest across academia and industry. You can explore Aurora on Azure AI Foundry Labs, a hub for AI research and experiments at Microsoft, or through the website of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

And finally, let’s talk about keeping our datacenters cool. In another Nature paper, for the first time, Microsoft researchers quantify energy and water use, as well as greenhouse emissions, of four different techniques for cooling datacenters across a datacenter’s lifespan.

The study found, for example, that switching from air cooling to cold plates – which cool datacenter chips more directly – could cut water use by 30 to 50 percent across the datacenter’s lifespans.

These findings will help Microsoft design future datacenters so they are more sustainable. Others can also access the lifecycle methodology through an open research repository.

Paw-se/Play

If you’ve been blasting through Doom: The Dark Ages since its release last month, you’re one of millions battling to save humanity from the forces of evil.

In between battles, gamers also helped save some furry friends.

In a heart-warming crossover, id Software, publisher Bethesda Softworks and Xbox invited fans to check out the “Doom: The Bark Ages” T-shirt.

That’s a T-shirt that features a corgi riding the Slayer’s fiery dragon. Proceeds went to three animal rescue organizations: Seattle Humane, Nebraska Humane Society and Montgomery County Humane Society to support animal welfare and pet adoption.

Thank you to everyone who helped to save humanity and our four-legged friends!

A class above

As a sixth-grade schoolteacher in Lima, Peru, Marco Antonio Pedraza knows that different kids learn differently and that one size doesn’t fit all.

He also knows the city’s classrooms are crowded and teachers like him are overstretched.

Earlier this year, Pedraza joined 500 teachers in 200 public schools in some of Lima’s poorest areas in trying out Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. The goal? To see if the AI companion that assists with work tasks can help them create more engaging and personalized lesson plans – quickly.

“It was a revelation,” says Pedraza. By simply describing his students’ traits – like being neurodivergent – he can prompt Copilot to generate tailored materials. One recent example: a custom lesson on polygons for three students with cognitive challenges. 

The pilot is backed by the World Bank and, if as successful as expected, could expand to all primary schools in Lima next year.

A culture of security

Microsoft has always taken digital security seriously, and that commitment has only deepened with the rise of generative AI.

As far back as 2015, the company was already removing non-consensual intimate images from its platforms and Bing search results. Last year, it released a 42-page report aimed at helping policymakers tackle abusive AI-generated content. It also donated its PhotoDNA technology to help victims remove harmful images from the internet.

And Microsoft isn’t afraid to take legal action when needed. The company has filed a lawsuit against members of a global network dubbed Storm-2139, accusing them of building tools to break into Azure OpenAI Service and other companies’ AI platforms in a “hacking-as-a-service scheme.”

The civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleges the defendants circumvented AI guardrails to create thousands of abusive AI images of celebrities, women and people of color. Many of the images were sexually explicit, misogynistic, violent or hateful.

“This case sends a clear message that we do not tolerate the abuse of our AI technology,” says Richard Boscovich, assistant general counsel for the company’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU).

Pride for each other

Microsoft is honoring Pride by inviting everyone to forge bonds of friendship and allyship, and by asking our employees to share how they draw strength from the community around them.

Fabrizio, for example, says he found strength in marching. “It made me brave enough to stand up for what I believe in and for others,” he says. Tracy joined a gender diversity parent group to connect with her trans kid: “They taught me the language to talk to her and give her space to be her true self,” that is, “a fashionista at 14.”

Other employees find meaning and representation in avatars or cherished possessions. Just ask Paige, whose avatar sports rainbow tresses, a qi pao and a business jacket. "I use it as my alter ego,” she says. We think she’d be right at home in front of C’s beloved toy computer, a whimsical representation of her tech journey.

Wherever you are in the world, we hope Microsoft’s AI, tools, technology and community make your daily forecast a little brighter and your rainbows a little more colorful.

Between issues, follow the Microsoft News and Stories LinkedIn page for the latest company news, or visit us at Microsoft Source to learn about people doing extraordinary things with technology.