Google’s DeepMind is Back (now with another AI Weather Model!)

Google just published a paper in Nature about GenCast – their new AI Model for Weather Ensembles.  With GenCast, Google DeepMind is creating a more modern version of GraphCast. With their ensemble model producing 50 high resolution (0.25˚) forecasts running for 15 day period, GenCast is the answer to limitations from its predecessor, GraphCast. 

Google’s foray into AI weather forecasting is not new. In fall 2023, Google DeepMind published this paper in Science about GraphCast. And their results were astounding --– a 10-day weather prediction in under one minute. Far faster than the most state of the art numerical weather prediction models. (Which take multiple hours to run on super computers)

I mean, just take a look at how pretty this global model looks.

I’m skeptical about a machine telling me about the weather when it’s never seen the sky. Now, I’m personally super open to AI being infused into all facets of our life (and believe AI is far more infused into our lives than we know). But, I am skeptical about AI trying to predict the next stage of weather. See, our current numerical prediction models are based on physics equations that define the movement of fluids (aka our atmosphere).

But with GraphGen and GraphCast, we don’t know how DeepMind is deciding the next step of the atmospheric progression. Is it creating it’s own physics to rule the atmosphere? Or is it guessing? (The answer is probably somewhere in between)

I don’t think AI will ever replace traditional numerical weather prediction models and human forecasters. I do think that the AI models will become another tool weather forecasters use to figure out our chaotic system of the atmosphere.

Want to learn more? Read the press release about GenCast.

Alex’s Corner I just started a new job as a product manager for IBM Environmental Intelligence (EI) - a climate and weather data platform. Our product is in public preview. If you want to try it out, you can sign up for the preview here. This is not sponsored – we’re just super curious to see what people think and how we can improve EI.

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