Google actively and effectively helped forecast many natural disasters this year, which were particularly challenging globally, using its advanced AI models to provide accurate information on extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tsunamis, and cyclones.
Google DeepMind is the first AI model dedicated to hurricanes to beat the traditional weather forecasters.
It has long been assumed that we cannot depict natural disasters, but now deep learning could help with real-time disaster detection.
Through all 13 Atlantic storms this year, Google's DeepMind model remained on top, beating human forecasters' on-track predictions.
This year, when the strongest storm, Melissa, churned through Haiti and other regions, meteorologists from the National Hurricane Centre NHC predicted that it would grow into a monster hurricane.
The lead forecaster, by using the Google AI model, predicted that in just 24 hours, the storm would become a category four hurricane and begin a turn towards the coast of Jamaica.
The statement was quite unusual, as no NHC forecaster had ever issued such a bold forecast for rapid strengthening.
Google’s new DeepMind hurricane model, an artificial intelligence system, was released in June for the first time.
The research tool has been making weather forecasts for a few years now, and the DeepMind model performed well in diagnosing large-scale weather patterns last year.
And as predicted, with the help of DeepMind, Hurricane Melissa did become a storm of astonishing strength that tore through Jamaica.
“They do it much more quickly than their physics-based cousins, and the computing power is less expensive and time-consuming,” said NHC former forecaster Michael Lowry.
“What this hurricane season has proven in short order is that the newcomer AI weather models are competitive with and, in some cases, more accurate than the slower physics-based weather models we’ve traditionally leaned on,” Lowry added.
Google DeepMind is a British-American artificial intelligence AI research laboratory founded in 2010.
It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Researchers believe that AI could be one of humanity’s most valuable inventions.
The mission is to create an intuitive future where digital technologies benefit humanity, and DeepMind's primary purpose is to build general-purpose learning algorithms.
