Why AI is an increasingly important tool in weather prediction
Artificial intelligence has been used to analyze data about weather and climate for years. Today, though, with a boost from increasingly powerful high-performance computers (HPC) and massive loads of data, scientists are beginning to apply AI to create forecasts that are more accurate, more granular, and further reaching.
That means technology is coming together to provide better climate predictions for the next 100 years as well as more pinpointed weather forecasts offering more warning for people to take shelter from events such as tornadoes and hurricanes. And this powerful combination of predictive technology, already being tested, could be working in the next three to five years.
“I think we’re about to see real breakthroughs,” says Sue Ellen Haupt, senior scientist and deputy director of the Research Applications Laboratory at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. “Using AI for forecasting isn’t new, but the push to use it more and to use it differently is new. We’re beginning to use AI to determine what storms will have extreme events, like hail or tornadoes. We might be able to get more than a few minutes’ warning. We hope to maybe even get hours. AI is going to be the key to better forecasting.”
And being able to improve an extreme weather prediction by even minutes could save lives and millions of dollars in property, according to David John Gagne, a machine learning scientist at NCAR who works with scientists at different weather and climate labs to help them develop AI and machine learning systems.
“Think about what it could mean for even an extra two minutes of warning for a tornado,” he says. “In some cases, that might allow you to get to shelter. If we can make more specific forecasts, we also might be able to say a tornado likely will take this path but it also could go over there, so you might want to take shelter there, too.”
Weather and climate forecasting scientists at organizations such as NCAR, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. National Weather Service are no strangers to technology, harnessing massive compute power and AI to improve forecasts and provide more accurate, far-reaching weather, climate, ocean, and space weather information.
The accuracy of daily weather forecasts, as well as warnings of severe weather, depends on smart algorithms and supercomputers. Weather forecasting, which involves managing, analyzing, and visualizing vast amounts of data, has depended on AI for years. Twenty years ago, when the Dynamic Integrated foreCast (DICast) system was created to take in meteorological data and produce automated and accurate forecasts, AI was part of it. And the system has been used by top commercial weather service companies.
“AI has been used in weather forecasting for a long time, but now there’s a resurgence because of advances in machine learning, driven by the availability of massive amounts of data and the power of GPUs” says Ilene Carpenter, Earth Sciences segment manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “Weather forecasting centers were among the first supercomputer users. Now, they are combining physical modeling on supercomputers with AI and data-driven approaches to enable better predictions.”
Each technology is dependent on the others because alone, they simply couldn’t get the job done. And what is happening in weather and climate forecasting is a taste of what will be happening in other industries around the globe.
“The advance of these technologies is creating a natural combination for more than just weather and climate but for everything going forward,” says Jeff Kagan, an independent industry analyst. “AI, of course, has been around for a while, but it’s just grown dramatically, and HPC has grown to a new level. If you can harness the power of those technologies together, then it will create a new way of doing things, a new paradigm.
