How Google's Deepmind AI 'could revolutionise weather forecasting'
ANDREW GRIFFIN
A new artificial intelligence (AI) breakthrough could revolutionise
weather forecasts, its creators have said.
The new technology, built by Google's Deepmind arm, allows for 10-day
weather forecasts to be produced in just a minute. And it does so with
unprecedented accuracy, Deepmind said.
The forecasts made by the Graph- Cast system are not only more accurate
but produced more efficiently, meaning they can be made more quickly and
with fewer resources.
It can also help spot possible extreme weather events, being able to
predict the movement of cyclones and provide early alerts of possible
floods and extreme temperatures.
Google said this could help save lives by allowing people to better prepare.
At the moment, weather forecasts usually rely on a system called
Numerical Weather Prediction, which combines physics equations with
algorithms run on supercomputers. That requires vast computing resources
as well as detailed expertise by weather forecasters.
The new system is one of a range of technologies that instead use deep
learning. Instead of looking at physical equations, it learns from
weather data and uses that to model how the Earth's weather changes over
time.
Creating the model was intensive, since it had to be trained on decades
of weather data. But now that it is created, it could vastly reduce the
resources required for predicting the weather: 10-day forecasts take a
minute on one machine, a process that might otherwise take hours and use
hundreds of machines in a supercomputer.
In use, the system has shown it is able to provide more accurate
forecasts than the gold-standard traditional system in 90pc of tests,
its creators write in a paper newly published in the journal Science.
What's more, the system is able to spot extreme weather events despite
not being trained on it.
In September, for instance, it had predicted the path of Hurricane Lee
nine days before it arrived, compared to six days for traditional forecasts.
Deepmind noted that GraphCast's prediction of extreme temperatures could
be particularly useful given the climate crisis. The system can predict
areas where the heat will arrive above the historical top temperatures,
allowing people to anticipate heat waves and prepare for them.
The company will also open source the system so that it can be used by
others. That may help with other new tools and research to help tackle
environmental challenges, Deepmind said. (© Independent News Service)
'It can also help spot possible extreme weather events... and provide
early alerts of possible floods and extreme heat'
Irish Independent
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