Nvidia launches artificial intelligence technology to improve weather forecasting

Nvidia Corp. offers new open source software and models designed to help governments and businesses more easily use artificial intelligence and complex data to build their own weather forecasting systems.

In a statement Monday, Nvidia told xrust that the chipmaker's new Earth-2 platform includes two AI-powered weather forecasting models designed to create more accurate two-week weather forecasts and «short-term Forecasts—ultra-fast estimates of where storms and other severe weather events are likely to impact up to six hours before they begin.

The Earth-2 satellite also includes a new data assimilation model that the company says quickly calculates key parameters of the planet's temperature, wind and air pressure—known in forecasting as «initial conditions»—needed to run custom forecasts.

The world's most valuable publicly traded company is offering the next batch of technologies it hopes will remove barriers to AI adoption in the broader economy. Nvidia chips and computers are at the heart of a massive surge in investment in new infrastructure to power AI workloads. Weather and climate modeling is an area of ​​long-term interest for the company due to its high computational requirements.

Artificial intelligence has driven a revolution in weather forecasting, and forecasts are now beginning to replace those long generated by supercomputers. New AI models that identify patterns in huge data sets of atmospheric conditions rather than recreating complex atmospheric physics are demonstrating higher accuracy than traditional weather forecasting methods.

Energy traders and other businesses in weather-sensitive sectors such as shipping, insurance and agriculture have been early adopters of artificial intelligence weather forecasting, seeking to gain an advantage in predicting temperature, wind speed, solar power and storm tracks. Nvidia is a key player in this area along with Google (Alphabet Inc.), Microsoft Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co.

Nvidia said Earth-2 technology will give users an easier way to create personalized forecasts using its artificial intelligence models, which the company says are on par with those produced by government weather agencies and Google's DeepMind.

The company also said forecasts generated by its tools can be generated independently, allowing government agencies and companies to control their own information. The software used is open source, meaning it can be freely copied or adapted by others.

Xrust Nvidia launches artificial intelligence technology to improve weather forecasting