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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

#41

"More accurate forecasts of risks of extreme weather can help officials safeguard more lives, avert damage, and save money," DeepMind said. Did the DeepMind AI say this?

...why else do you think it's important to predict hurricane paths and tornado spawning storms and flooding rains and heat waves further ahead of time?

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

#42
It does seem like this is one of those domains where new AI models could thrive. From my understanding, the amount and variety of data necessary to make these models work is huge. In addition to historical data, you've got constant satellite data, weather stations on the ground for data collection, weather balloons going high into the atmosphere multiple times daily per location, Doppler radars tracking precipitation, data from ships and other devices in the ocean measuring temps and other info, and who knows what else.

It's incredible that we are able to predict anything this far into the future, but the complexity seems like it lends itself to this kind of black box approach.

*This is all speculation, so I'd be grateful if someone more knowledgeable could tell if if I'm mistaken about these assumptions. It's an interesting topic.

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

#43
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?

More than 0

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

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your analogy doesn't make sense. Nobel winning physicists can definitely perform arithmetic.

It's trendy for accomplished people to talk down about themselves as a way to sound cute. It's similar to software developers who like to say "I don't know what I'm doing, I just Google and Stackoverflow all day." It has a certain charm to it, and certainly there are some people for whom it's true, but overall it's just a misguided attempt at being modest but ultimately a horribly misleading statement.

"Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater" - Albert Einstein

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

#46
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.

We can work backwards from correct predictions and develop an understanding that way.

But most people just need to know if it’s going to be storming, hot or, going to rain on a given day and that is where this shines.

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

#47
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It's still not as good as actually new data. The individual model may not overfit the existing data, but the whole system of researchers trying lots of models, choosing the best ones, trying different hyperparameters etc. easily can.

yeah, but weather patterns data isn't different now than 10 years ago, right? right? ...

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

#48
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wish these sort of papers would focus more on the 3 percent that it got wrong. Is it wrong by saying that a day would have a slight drizzle but it was actually sunny all day, or was it wrong by missing a catastrophic rain storm that devastated a region?

I've worked on several projects trying to use AI to model various CFD calculations. We could trivially get 90+ percent accuracy on a bunch of metrics, the problem is that its almost always the really important and critical cases that end up being wrong in the AI model.

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

#49

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

Aside from the fact you're conflating two very different things comparing this to Gemini, what exactly is the problem with the Gemini?

Specifically just that the release was a bit awkward and had some problems? I've found the latest model releases to be very good compared to other frontier models.

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

#50
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?

Climatologists use climate models to predict the climate. Meteorologists use weather models to predict the weather. They are different time scales and disciplines.
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