China bets on AI weather forecasting as extreme weather intensifies

FILE PHOTO: Aftermath of Typhoon Dolphin in Shanghai

SHANGHAI, Aug 11 (Reuters) - As meteorologists tracked Typhoon Dolphin's path toward China in recent days, a new generation of artificial intelligence weather models worked alongside traditional forecasting systems, highlighting ‌China's emergence as a leading player in the race to improve weather prediction.

Chinese-developed systems, including Shanghai AI Laboratory-developed ‌Fengwu, Huawei's Pangu and Fudan University's Fuxi, are among a handful of AI forecasting models that researchers say can generate forecasts much faster than conventional systems while ​matching or surpassing them on some measures of accuracy.

For decades, weather prediction has relied on numerical models running on supercomputers that simulate atmospheric physics. AI models instead learn patterns from vast archives of historical weather observations and can produce forecasts in a fraction of the time. The technology is increasingly being tested during typhoon season in East Asia, where even small improvements in track ‌forecasts can help authorities better prepare for ⁠flooding, organise evacuations and manage potential transport disruptions.

The rise of AI weather forecasting has created a new arena of competition among technology companies, research institutes and meteorological agencies, with China emerging as ⁠one of the field's leading players.

Among the best-known AI forecasting systems globally are Google's GraphCast and GenCast, Nvidia-backed FourCastNet and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' AI Forecasting System, known as AIFS.

Fengwu attracted attention after developers reported it outperformed GraphCast across ​roughly ​80% of evaluated weather variables and extended skilful global medium-range forecasts ​beyond 10 days.

"With more extreme weather, people need information ‌to make decisions, both local governments, the national government, also the average person, farmers and fisherman," said Sun Zhi, the CTO of Techwind, the company responsible for Fengwu's industrial applications. "So we want to help provide better information so people can make decisions."

While AI systems are becoming an increasingly important complement to conventional forecasting because of their speed and lower computing costs, they are unlikely to fully replace traditional weather models in the near future.

According to Techwind's Sun, AI models are already ‌capable of predicting the path of typhoons — five days out from Dolphin's ​landfall Fengwu predicted the time and place it would hit mainland China ​to within 30 minutes and 30 km (19 miles) — but ​they still lag conventional weather forecasts in predicting the intensity of a storm and they ‌are still untested predicting major climate developments.

"If we predict ​a climate change event 18 ​months in advance, people won't believe it," Sun said. "They need to know it's reliable. We need to do years of scientific research before people trust us when we say there will be an El Nino event or ​we say the changing temperature on the ‌sea's surface will affect the breeding cycle of fish."

As the tech forecasters work to make their systems ever ​more sophisticated, the concurrent use of both methods is likely to continue for some time.

(Reporting by Casey ​Hall and Chenxi Yang in Shanghai; Editing by Kate Mayberry)