Another place AI is marking a particular big impact is weather forecasting. Google is continuing its work in the area with a new Weather Lab website and experimental cyclone, or hurricane, predictions.
Weather Lab comes from Google DeepMind and Google Research, with this interactive website featuring AI weather models, including an experimental AI-based tropical cyclone model that can “predict a cyclone’s formation, track, intensity, size and shape — generating 50 possible scenarios, up to 15 days ahead.” (Cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons are all tropical storms, with what they are called dependent on their location.)
Based on stochastic neural networks, it is “often more accurate than, current physics-based methods” at predicting cyclone track and intensity. Google worked with the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) to scientifically validate the work.
- “NHC expert forecasters are now seeing live predictions from our experimental AI models, alongside other physics-based models and observations. We hope this data can help improve NHC forecasts and provide earlier and more accurate warnings for hazards linked to tropical cyclones.”
- Google is also working with the UK Met Office, University of Tokyo, Japan’s Weathernews Inc. and other experts to improve our models.
- “For example, our initial evaluations of NHC’s observed hurricane data, on test years 2023 and 2024, in the North Atlantic and East Pacific basins, showed that our model’s 5-day cyclone track prediction is, on average, 140 km closer to the true cyclone location than ENS — the leading global physics-based ensemble model from ECMWF. This is comparable to the accuracy of ENS’s 3.5-day predictions — a 1.5-day improvement that has typically taken over a decade to achieve.”
First and foremost, Weather Lab is a research tool and “not intended for consumer use.” It’s meant to “help weather agencies and emergency service experts better anticipate a cyclone’s path and intensity.” A persistent message at the bottom says: “For official weather forecasts and warnings, refer to your local meteorological agency or national weather service.”
With that in mind, this Google Maps-like interface shows “live and historical cyclone predictions for different AI weather models, alongside physics-based models from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.” It can be used to “explore and compare the predictions from various AI and physics-based models.”
- Observed
- Google’s experimental cyclone model
- WeatherNext Gen
- WeatherNext Graph
- ECMWF ENS
- ECMWF HRES
Animation showing a prediction from our experimental cyclone model. Our model (in blue) accurately predicted the paths of Cyclones Honde and Garance, south of Madagascar, at the time they were active. Our model also captured the paths of Cyclones Jude and Ivone in the Indian Ocean, almost seven days in the future, robustly predicting areas of stormy weather that would eventually intensify into tropical cyclones.
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