Traditional weather prediction requires huge amounts of computing power to work.
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Now a new AI-powered weather model is being released to the public that transforms the way weather is predicted.
Pangu-Weather, an AI model for weather prediction developed by HUAWEI CLOUD, enables more accurate weather forecasts to be made with a 10,000x improvement in prediction speeds, reducing global weather prediction times to just seconds.
This facilitates the early prediction and preparation of extreme weather. These results were published in the peer-reviewed scientific publication Nature on July 5, 2023.
Pangu-Weather is the first AI prediction model with higher precision than traditional numerical prediction methods and is being released to the public for the first time, for free on the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) website.
This provides global weather forecasters, meteorologists, weather enthusiasts, and the general public with a platform to view Pangu Weather Model's 10-day global weather forecasts.
In addition to making 10-day weather forecasts available, the ECMWF has also released a report comparing the forecasts made by Pangu-Weather and the ECMWF IFS (a leading global NWP system) from April to July 2023.
According to the report, the uptake of machine learning (ML) methods like Pangu-Weather could be "a game-changer for the incremental and rather slow progress of traditional numerical weather prediction (NWP) methods" whose forecast skill has been increasing by about one day per decade (according to the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO).
This can be attributed to the high computational cost of running a forecast with standard NWP systems. ML models are poised to revolutionize weather forecasting with forecasts that require much lower computational costs and are highly-competitive in terms of accuracy.
Pangu-Weather model's prediction capabilities have been tested in extreme situations such as Storm Eunice which hit north-western Europe in February 2022 and the first time the UK hit 40°C in the summer of 2022.
These two examples show that data-driven models are capable of forecasting extreme weather situations and of providing guidance for medium-range forecasting.
Pangu-Weather prediction covers geopotential, specific humidity, wind speed and temperature. All of this information is critical to predicting the development of weather systems, storm trajectories, air quality, and weather patterns.
Pangu-Weather has also been used in predicting the trajectory of Typhoon Khanun, the sixth typhoon this year. ■
Modified arctic air combined with a moisture-laden area of low pressure along the Gulf Coast will continue to allow for a broad area of winter weather impacts from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Southeast today into early Saturday morning.