Article by Adele Peters: “Last October, days before Hurricane Melissa slammed into Jamaica, it wasn’t obvious how quickly the storm would intensify or the path it would take. But inside Google, an experimental AI model was spinning through dozens of scenarios, including the possibility that it might be the strongest hurricane on record to hit the island.
Five days before the storm made landfall—while traditional weather models were undecided on whether it would weaken and turn in another direction—the AI model, called WeatherNext, predicted with 80% confidence that Melissa would rapidly intensify from a Category 1 storm to a Category 5 and land in Jamaica. Google sent its predictions to the U.S.’s National Hurricane Center, which used the models to help make a record-breaking high-intensity forecast.
That early forecast “was critical,” says Evan Thompson, principal director of the Meteorological Service of Jamaica. “We want to get the information as soon as possible and then continuously drill that message to the public.” A Category 5 hurricane had never made landfall on the island. The weather office warned residents that anything they had experienced before “would pale in comparison,” Thompson says, and urged people to prepare however they could…
The Google DeepMind model was more accurate than any other model the National Hurricane Center used during the storm. Now, as the new hurricane season begins on June 1, the NHC will work with Google again. Last year, the model ran a set of 50 possible futures every six hours; this year, it will look at 1,000 futures every six hours, making it even more likely that it can predict unusual storms. “This significant increase should provide more stable and consistent guidance,” says Philippe Papin, NHC senior hurricane specialist.
Google is one of several companies working to use AI to reshape forecasting as weather becomes more extreme. That includes other large tech companies like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Huawei, and startups like Atmo, Tomorrow.io, and WindBorne—some of which are also collecting better data through cheap satellites or redesigned weather balloons…(More)”.
