Nvidia launches AI technologies to aid weather forecasting

(Bloomberg) --Nvidia Corp. is offering 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.

The chipmaker's new Earth-2 platform includes a pair of AI-based weather models designed to generate more accurate two-week weather predictions and "nowcasts," ultra short-term insights into where storms and other severe weather might have an impact six hours in advance, Nvidia said Monday in a statement.

Earth-2 also includes a new data assimilation model the company said rapidly computes key snapshots of the planet's temperature, wind and air pressure — known in forecasting as the "initial conditions" — needed to launch custom forecasts.

The world's most valuable publicly traded company is offering yet another batch of technology it hopes will remove roadblocks to the adoption of AI in the broader economy. Nvidia's chips and computers are at the heart of the massive surge in spending on new infrastructure to power AI workloads. Weather and climate modeling are long-term areas of interest for the company because of the intense computing requirements. 

AI has underpinned a revolution in weather predictions, which are starting to replace forecasts long generated by supercomputers. New AI models, which identify patterns in enormous datasets on atmospheric conditions instead of recreating the atmosphere's complex physics, are shown to be more accurate than the traditional method for predicting weather conditions.

Energy traders and other businesses in weather-sensitive sectors like shipping, insurance and agriculture have been early adopters of AI weather forecasting as they seek an edge in predicting temperatures, wind speeds, solar energy and storm tracks. Nvidia has been a key player in the area alongside Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Microsoft Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co.

Nvidia said the Earth-2 technology will give users a more streamlined way to build bespoke forecasts using its AI models, which the company says rival those released by government meteorologic agencies and Google's DeepMind. 

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