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Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast

phys.org

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

#81

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

n4r9 wrote: post #57
BadHumans wrote: post #56

I'm friends with a meteorologist and the 15+ day forecast is the bane of their existence because you can't accurately forecast beyond a week so I would love to know how they are measuring accuracy. The article doesn't say and I know the paper is going to go over my head.

I would guess that everyday they're comparing the current weather against the forecast from 15 days ago. Not a lot of data points to be sure, but perhaps enough to have confidence of very high accuracy.

No need to guess. It's in the paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08252-9

See section "Baselines".

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

#85

Post by [deleted] »

chaos_emergent wrote: post #16
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?

[deleted]

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

#86

Post by encoderer »

I recently read that the 10 day forecast now is as accurate as the 5 day forecast from 30 years ago when I was a kid.

This surprised me. I grew up in Ohio and now I live in the Bay Area and the forecast here seems to be accurate only 2-3 days out. It would be so helpful to have an accurate 10 day forecast.

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

#88

Post by memco »

encoderer wrote: post #86

I recently read that the 10 day forecast now is as accurate as the 5 day forecast from 30 years ago when I was a kid. This surprised me. I grew up in Ohio and now I live in the Bay Area and the forecast here seems to be accurate only 2-3 days out. It would be so helpful to have an accurate 10 day forecast.

This also surprises me. The weather app on my iphone has been atrocious with local same-day forecasts lately. It will say that the forecast for noon is sunny when it is 11:50 and dumping rain. It sometimes gets the overall idea that warmer or colder weather is coming sometime soon but it’s off by up to 2 days. I haven’t bothered to look for better sources, but it might be worth doing some research and comparison.

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

#89

Post by labster »

jacobgkau wrote: post #25
chaos_emergent wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The climatologists can, at least. Can they scrutinize the esoteric ensemble of weights making up this AI model? And which type of model's going to be easier to update based on changing climate parameters, a climate model or an AI model?

Weather and climate models have their own physics, which at the very least means that the solution is physical for the universe that particular model inhabits. The boundary conditions are parameterized, and those can be tweaked as climate and land use changes.

AI models don’t have any of that, but they are actually more akin to human forecasters, gaining forecast skill from pattern recognition. I think there’s a place for both in weather forecasting, but I’d have zero confidence in an AI climate model, or anything longer than a year. An AI might be very good at seasonal forecasts though, picking up easy to miss signals in the MJO or ENSO.

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