Google reinvents the weather with ultra-precise AI within two weeks

Google is taking another step into the future with its new GenCast artificial intelligence model. The Mountainview firm now claims to be able to predict weather conditions with unrivaled precision over two weeks in record time.

Google outperforms European Weather Forecast Center model

Trained with some weather data collected since 1979, namely temperature, wind speed and atmospheric pressure, GenCast can generate a fifteen-day forecast in just eight minutes. Currently, it takes several hours of work for the same task. If the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which establishes forecasts for 35 countries, is a global benchmark, Google explains that GenCast exceeds its reliability by 97%. Indeed, the two models were tested on 1,320 climate disasters observed in 2019; the web giant's AI would have been much more precise than the European center's tools. According to Google, GenCast would have been significantly more accurate in forecasting scorching temperatures, extreme cold and strong winds.

Although Google should not take a monopoly on weather forecasts, this advance is considered major since it represents a first step in the integration of AI in the profession.