IMVIGORATE (IMVI · Guided · Operational · Rigor for · Assimilative · Trusted · Emulation) is a NASA ESTO Tiger Team developing a systematic methodology for building, evaluating, and trusting surrogate models across the IMVI Earth science modeling portfolio. The framework attacks four challenges every emulator team faces — sample efficiency, architecture selection, trust and reusability, and adjoint acceleration for assimilation — through five integrated components: a production-grade active data pipeline (EXPLORE), documented architecture wisdom (FORWARD), adjoint emulation for 4D-Var (BACKWARD), standardized characterization reports (ASSESS), and a cross-cutting bridge task that learns adjoints directly from forward training data. Three complementary use cases drive the work — PBL/LES parameterization emulation, ECCO ocean reanalysis acceleration, and GEOS-S2S-3 diffusion-based ensemble augmentation — spanning atmospheric, oceanic, and subseasonal-to-seasonal modeling. Across four institutions (JPL, GSFC, JHU APL, Purdue) and one NASA mission office (GMAO), IMVIGORATE delivers reusable infrastructure, documented architecture trade-offs, and a shared scoping vocabulary (Full Model, Sub-Module, Derived Quantity, A Priori) that make emulation a trusted, portfolio-wide capability for NASA Earth science.