Predicting the weather goes beyond telling you how hot or cold today and the rest of the week is going to be. It involves predicting and understanding the sheer force and direction of natural disasters like hurricanes, typhoons, and so on. But Google thinks it can help. Google has announced its WeatherNext AI model to improve hurricane warnings.
Google develops AI to improve hurricane warnings
According to Google, they explained why they developed an AI to improve hurricane warnings. “Tropical cyclones — also known as hurricanes or typhoons — are among the most destructive weather phenomena on Earth, responsible for more than 700,000 deaths and $1.4 trillion in economic losses globally over the past 50 years.”
But why would you need AI for that? Google says that these types of weather events are uniquely difficult to predict. This is because global atmospheric currents are traditionally analyzed using coarser global models. This means it uses rather broad data to make its predictions, versus storms which use specialized local models.
To address that problem, Google’s WeatherNext trained on nearly 20 terabytes worth of global atmospheric data. It also used historic information collected by the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship. With this AI, Google claims it can generate a single 15-day forecast in less than a minute.
The company also boasts that its tech has had real-world impact. It was used to help the NHC forecast Hurricane Melissa, which allowed the NHC to issue advanced warnings and enable teams more time to prepare.
Opening up its AI
Now, Google isn’t keeping its secrets to itself. The company has announced that it is making WeatherNext AI open-source. This will allow developers to study the code and maybe even build something of their own based off of it.
Google says, “We hope to accelerate progress across the global weather community and empower meteorological agencies, researchers, and nonprofits to better predict weather events of all kinds and make key decisions to protect lives and infrastructure.”
The company has also published a paper in Nature if you’re interested in learning more about it.
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