  Recently, large models, or foundation models have demonstrated outstanding
performance and have been applied in a variety of disciplines, such as
chemistry, biology, economics, etc. Foundation models, trained on vast amounts
of data, can be adapted to a wide range of use cases. The emergence of
foundation models has a significant impact on the research paradigms in these
fields. Geophysics is a scientific field dedicated to exploring and
understanding the Earth's structures and states through the application of
physical principles and the analysis of multimodal geophysical data. In the
field of geophysics, the processing and interpretation of geophysical data are
characterized by three primary features: extensive data volume, multimodality,
and dependence on experience. These characteristics provide a suitable
environment as well as challenges for the development and breakthrough of
foundation models in the field of geophysics. In this perspective, we discuss
the potential applications and research directions of geophysical foundation
models (GeoFMs), exploring new research paradigms in geophysics in the era of
foundation models. Exploration geophysics is the main focus, while the
development of foundation models in remote sensing, seismology, and other
related sub-disciplines in geophysics is also discussed. In the meantime, we
also propose two strategies for constructing GeoFMs and discuss challenges that
may arise during the process of development.
