Hannah Ritchie at Sustainability by Numbers:
The potential for AI to improve weather forecasting and climate modelling (which also takes a long time and uses a lot of energy) has been known for several years now.3 AI models have been tested for one- and two-week forecasts with promising results.4 Scientists will often need to wait weeks for a complex, high-resolution climate model to run; AI might be able to do this hundreds, if not thousands, of times faster.
But a huge trial in India this year has taken a huge step forward. The Indian Ministry of Agriculture partnered with teams of scientists from the Human-Centred Weather Forecasts Initiative, the University of Chicago, California, Berkeley, Bombay, Bangalore, and others.
They sent weekly AI-powered forecasts about the monsoon to 38 million farmers across 13 states in India. These AI forecasts predicted changes in the monsoon that all other ones missed. The forecasts of the timing of the monsoon were sent up to four weeks in advance of its arrival; conventional physics-based modelling usually can’t do it more than five days in advance.
More here.
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