Can AI help create more accurate hurricane forecasts? | Tracking the Tropics

The supercomputers running traditional hurricane models use numerical weather prediction rooted in physics, solving complex equations. A single run can take several hours to complete.

The scientists behind AI models, like Google’s and the ECMWF’s, promise accurate forecasts at a fraction of the time and energy spent on computation. Google’s AI model takes about a minute to complete a 15-day forecast.

The Google AI model is built on a neural network that mimics the human brain. It is trained on decades of weather data and uses what is essentially advanced pattern recognition to produce a number of outcomes.

Google claims its AI model is “as accurate as, and often more accurate than, current physics-based methods.”

WFLA’s Max Defender 8 Weather Team put its accuracy to the test and found that the Google AI model’s track predictions for hurricanes Helene and Milton were just miles off from the storms’ actual paths. It should be noted that with both of these storms, the track was pretty straightforward, with many models in the ballpark of the actual track.

Google’s intensity forecast, however, missed the mark for Hurricane Milton and under-forecast the major storm’s strength during our test. Hurricane models, AI or otherwise, can struggle with accurately predicting intensity.

Google is partnering with experts at the National Hurricane Center to scientifically validate the model’s approach and outputs.

“NHC expert forecasters are now seeing live predictions from our experimental AI models, alongside other physics-based models and observations,” a Google news release said. “We hope this data can help improve NHC forecasts and provide earlier and more accurate warnings for hazards linked to tropical cyclones.”

Today on Tracking the Tropics, National Hurricane Center Science Operations Officer Wallace Hogsett, Ph. D. sits down with our team to answer your questions about how AI factors into the NHC’s research and forecasts.

As for the tropics, all is quiet in the Atlantic, with no tropical activity expected in the next seven days.