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People shelter under umbrellas from the wind and rain as they cross a road near Shinjuku train station on October 12, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan ahead of Typhoon Hagibis’ expected landfal later in the evening. | Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images
GenCast, a new AI model from Google DeepMind, is accurate enough to compete with traditional weather forecasting. It managed to outperform a leading forecast model when tested on data from 2019, according to recently published research.
AI isn’t going to replace traditional forecasting anytime soon, but it could add to the arsenal of tools used to predict the weather and warn the public about severe storms. GenCast is one of several AI weather forecasting models being developed that might lead to more accurate forecasts.
“Weather basically touches every aspect of our lives ... it’s also one of the big scientific challenges, predicting the weather,” says Ilan Price, a senior research scientist at DeepMind. “Google DeepMind has a mission to advance AI for the benefit of humanity. And I think this is one important way, one important contribution on that front.”
Price and his colleagues tested GenCast against the ENS system, one of the world’s top-tier models for forecasting that’s run by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). GenCast outperformed ENS 97.2...
