By: Hannah Zhang

As Hurricane Beryl whipped through the Caribbean in early July 2024, the European model of a weather prediction showed the Hurricane heading toward Mexico, with its power intensifying–while experimental AI software showed it going North and into mainland USA. And north it went, right into the streets of Texas.

AI softwares predicting weather is the future of weather forecasting. More and more AI programs are able to predict global weather patterns with higher speed and accuracy than ever before, opening new doors to understanding the unpredictable art of weather. The program in question that predicted such an accurate path of Hurricane Beryl is an experimental one called GraphCast, developed by DeepMind (a company acquired by Google in 2014).

“This is a really exciting step,” said Matthew Chantry, an A.I. specialist at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the same agency that was outperformed by GraphCast. He added that GraphCast and other weather programs would regularly outdo their human counterparts in understanding hurricanes and their whims. With the A.I., weather warnings will become more “more up-to-date than right now,” according to Christopher S. Bretherton, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, which could make following storms much more convenient.

Another one of the uses of A.I. when predicting weather is that it can run on desktop computers, accomplishing what usually needs a supercomputer the size of entire rooms to be performed. This makes the science much more accessible. The GraphCast program was so successful that, according to the New York Times, Dr. Chantry of ECMWF saw it as a regular part of the future of weather forecasting.
In the end, when Hurricane Beryl struck Texas, it killed no less than 38 people, flooded streets, and cut out power for millions of people.

With the help of new A.I. softwares able to predict weather more accurately and efficiently than ever before, many more future lives can be spared at the hands of ruthless storms like Hurricane Beryl.