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Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast

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Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast

#11

Post by rtsil »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #5

Obviously this team knows way more about this donain than me but I have to ask, wouldnt this only be able to predict weather which is in line with past weather patterns/indicators? I can imagine a weather analyst might be able to see "between the data" and recognise when some anomaly might be brewing, but an AI model would not

I know nothing about weather, but aren't changes happening gradually instead of overnight? There's no major anomaly that appears all of a sudden. In which case we can assume the every new change will be incorporated in the AI model's training.

Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast

#12

Post by dylan604 »

xnx wrote: post #3
BrawnyBadger53 wrote: post #2

I thought I remembered this model being released many months ago? Or is this a new update to the model?

New model. Much better than the last one.

It's so new that it has no long term track record. I want to see how its record looks after say 1/3/5 years. Any 15 day forecast is just too far into the future for me to take seriously. Even the 3 day forecast is loose at best. By the time it reaches 7-10 days, some of the forecast is completely off when it reaches the 3 day window.

"But DeepMind said GenCast surpassed the precision of the center's forecasts in more than 97 percent of the 1,320 real-world scenarios from 2019 which they were both tested on."

Great, so it's using historical data to make a prediction about what has already happened. I want to see it on current data where it is truly a prediction with no data to make that prediction.

I'm not convinced the results haven't been juiced/salted

Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast

#13

Post by sgt101 »

atonse wrote: post #7

This is great from a practical standpoint (being able to predict weather), but does it actually improve our understanding of the weather, or WHY those predictions are better? That is my issue with some of these AI advances. With these, we won't have actually gotten better at understanding the weather patterns, since it's all just a bunch of weights which nobody really understands.

whelp...

Ok, how would you articulate an understanding of how the weather works?

Let's face it, it's not going to be easy to frame in natural language...

Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast

#14

Post by bobthepanda »

atonse wrote: post #7

This is great from a practical standpoint (being able to predict weather), but does it actually improve our understanding of the weather, or WHY those predictions are better? That is my issue with some of these AI advances. With these, we won't have actually gotten better at understanding the weather patterns, since it's all just a bunch of weights which nobody really understands.

I think it certainly doesn’t foreclose on knowing more in the future, based on what we observe with this new model.

Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast

#16

Post by chaos_emergent »

atonse wrote: post #7

This is great from a practical standpoint (being able to predict weather), but does it actually improve our understanding of the weather, or WHY those predictions are better? That is my issue with some of these AI advances. With these, we won't have actually gotten better at understanding the weather patterns, since it's all just a bunch of weights which nobody really understands.

How many people can scrutinize the esoteric ensemble of climate models that existing climatologists use to generate weather predictions today?

Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast

#18

Post by giarc »

dylan604 wrote: post #12
xnx wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New model. Much better than the last one.

It's so new that it has no long term track record. I want to see how its record looks after say 1/3/5 years. Any 15 day forecast is just too far into the future for me to take seriously. Even the 3 day forecast is loose at best. By the time it reaches 7-10 days, some of the forecast is completely off when it reaches the 3 day window. "But DeepMind said GenCast surpassed the precision of the center's forecasts in more…

>Great, so it's using historical data to make a prediction about what has already happened.

That's ok though because it doesn't know it's acting on old data. Researchers would give it data and ask for the 15 day forecast, the researchers then compare against that real world data. And as noted, "it surpassed the centres forecast in more than 97 percent" of those tests. This is all referred to as backtesting.

Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast

#19

Post by zamadatix »

dylan604 wrote: post #12
xnx wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New model. Much better than the last one.

It's so new that it has no long term track record. I want to see how its record looks after say 1/3/5 years. Any 15 day forecast is just too far into the future for me to take seriously. Even the 3 day forecast is loose at best. By the time it reaches 7-10 days, some of the forecast is completely off when it reaches the 3 day window. "But DeepMind said GenCast surpassed the precision of the center's forecasts in more…

2019 would already be a post-training data prediction:

> GenCast is trained on 40 years of best-estimate analysis from 1979 to 2018, taken from the publicly available ERA5 (fifth generation ECMWF reanalysis) reanalysis dataset

Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast

#20

Post by amazingamazing »

Always42 wrote: post #15

Based on the Gemini release it’s hard to take what Google claims at face value.

Totally different constraints. It’s like saying Nobel prize winning physicists can’t be trusted because they get basic arithmetic wrong

Gemini is fast food - it’s not supposed to be the best.

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