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DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

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Re: DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

#61

Post by tcumulus »

sunshinesnacks wrote: post #54
geertj wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine this would be trained on actual historical weather data instead?

Pretty much all of the AI weather prediction models are trained on ECMWF ERA5, which is kinda like a numerical weather prediction model run to forecast at t=0. ERA5 is historical weather data, but it’s a “reanalysis” of it.

Indeed, you can imagine this as some sort of advanced physics-based interpolation of various measurements (land stations, satellite data, ...) to fill in every cell in a latitude-longitude grid. This is not only used for ERA5 (training data for the models), but also to determine the initial conditions for every grid cell which are used to roll out the forecast. So AI weather models depend greatly on the NWP/physics used in for reanalysis and initial conditions. That being said, there is also research being conducted in training models straight from the raw data (weather stations, satellite, ...), thus bypassing the "interpolation" step.

Re: DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

#62

Post by SubiculumCode »

mattlondon wrote: post #9
moktonar wrote: post #4

They should try to forecast earthquakes, that would really be a breakthrough If anything better than random comes out

Google has the early warning system that gives people maybe 20-30s to e.g. turn off gas, stop vehicles, get under something solid. There was a lot of news recently about how this saved many thousands of lives in Venezuela I think it was. But hey let's all keep shitting on Google because their coding agent is slightly worse than SOTA.

I don't think the parent was shitting on Google

Re: DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

#63

Post by treis »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #27
trescenzi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically typhoon forecasting, at this moment, is more valuable. These predictions are matters of life, death, and billions of dollars in damage.

I know this is uncharitable and I am wrong but I am having trouble coming up with concrete scenarios where you die with 2 days notice but survive with 3. I am nonethless a believer that more accurate forecasting has value.

I don't think the amount of notice is as important as "this totally is for sure going to wreck you" is. We generally know something is going to hit somewhere at sometime. Which isn't specific enough for everyone to act on

Re: DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

#64

Post by baq »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #27
trescenzi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically typhoon forecasting, at this moment, is more valuable. These predictions are matters of life, death, and billions of dollars in damage.

I know this is uncharitable and I am wrong but I am having trouble coming up with concrete scenarios where you die with 2 days notice but survive with 3. I am nonethless a believer that more accurate forecasting has value.

You can walk 50km in those extra 24 hours which will save your life if you’re in a storm surge area without other means of transportation, which is easily the case when everyone else is evacuating alongside you.

Re: DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

#65

Post by SubiculumCode »

cossatot wrote: post #51
moktonar wrote: post #4

They should try to forecast earthquakes, that would really be a breakthrough If anything better than random comes out

Forecasting earthquakes via ML should be possible but is very strongly limited by data. We have ~50 years of reasonably good seismological catalogs for most of the world. The seismic cycle (the sequence of major earthquake, reloading, major earthquake on a single section of fault) is generally thousands of years except at the fastest-slipping faults. There are very few sections of faults where we have seismological o…

You seem to know much more about this topic than I do, and your assessment agrees with mine. Predicting rare and sudden events is a very difficult modeling problem generally, and the data limitations is real. I agree that it will probably need to come from coupling of ML with physical simulators plus more extensive 3D map data on force vectors, material properties, etc.

Re: DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

#66

Post by embedding-shape »

fallingbananna wrote: post #24
embedding-shape wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wake me up once commercial airplanes can take advantage of this and take us across the Atlantic in less than 5 hours.

I don't mean to be disrespectful... but, why would you consider tech intended to save lives and resources less of a deal, than slightly faster flights over the Atlantic?

No disrespect taken :) It was (obviously) a joke, I'm not seriously waiting for us to hurl airplanes through cyclones to make air travel faster.

Re: DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

#67

Post by esperent »

baq wrote: post #59
esperent wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does predicting a typhoon prevent billions in damage? It could save thousands of lives because people can be evacuated if you can predict a few hours or a day further ahead, or the path more accurately. You can save some damage by moving ships and vehicles. But you can't evacuate buildings or infrastructure.

You can board up a helluva lot more stuff in a week than in two days. Crucially, you can move more of the most expensive stuff out of the storm surge zone, which is where the biggest damage happens and try to flood proof more of the things which can’t be moved.

> You can board up a helluva lot more stuff in a week than in two days

TFA says they might be able to predict one extra day ahead (three days instead of two). No prediction system will ever give you a week's notice on a typhoon.

Re: DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

#68

Post by numbers_guy »

tcumulus wrote: post #32

Everything in AI seems to be focused on LLMs lately. But in my opinion, powerful problem-specific models like this are even more interesting. The SOTA AI models used in weather forecasting are already outperforming the classic NWP models while being orders of magnitude more efficient (inference). Most are based on multi scale (hierarchical) Graph Neural Networks, an architecture which is not often talked about. The o…

I can assure you that anyone who touches numerical simulations of any kind (physicists, engineers, chemists, biophysicts...etc) has tried their hand at ML based surrogate models in the last 5 years, so it's not like they aren't being tested. From my experience, they aren't very robust. Weather modeling is actually one of the very few areas where it seems to work half decently.
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