IMD Exams Use of AI in Weather Forecasts Amid Rise in Floods, Droughts

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is testing synthetic intelligence (AI) to construct local weather fashions to enhance climate forecasting as torrential rains, floods and droughts proliferate throughout the huge nation, a high climate official stated.

Global warming has triggered extra intense clashes of climate programs in India in recent times, growing excessive climate occasions, which the unbiased Centre for Science and Environment estimates have killed almost 3,000 folks this 12 months.

Weather companies around the globe are focussing on AI, which might carry down value and enhance velocity, and which Britain’s Met Office says may “revolutionise” climate forecasting, with a latest Google-funded mannequin discovered to have outperformed standard strategies.

Accurate climate forecasting is especially essential in India, a rustic of 1.4 billion folks, many impoverished, and the world’s second-largest producer of rice, wheat and sugar.

The IMD gives forecasts primarily based on mathematical fashions utilizing supercomputers. Using AI with an expanded statement community may assist generate higher-quality forecast knowledge at decrease value.

The division expects the AI-based local weather fashions and advisories it’s creating to assist enhance forecasts, Ok.S. Hosalikar, head of local weather analysis and companies at IMD, advised Reuters.

The climate workplace has used AI to generate public alerts concerning heatwaves and such illnesses as malaria, Hosalikar stated. It plans to extend climate observatories, offering knowledge right down to village degree, probably providing higher-resolution knowledge for forecasts, he stated.

The authorities stated on Thursday it needs to generate climate and local weather forecasts by incorporating AI into conventional fashions, and has arrange a centre to check the thought by means of workshops and conferences.

“An AI model doesn’t require the high cost involved in running a supercomputer – you can even run it out of a good quality desktop,” stated Saurabh Rathore, an assistant professor at Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi.

Better knowledge can also be wanted to take advantage of out of AI, specialists say.

“Without having high-resolution data in space and time, no AI model for location-specific magnification of existing model forecasts is feasible,” stated Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay, a local weather scientist on the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

© Thomson Reuters 2023