New European AI weather model to improve forecasts

The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has made its new AI model, the Artificial Intelligence Forecasting System (AIFS), available to everyone free of charge. Medium-range weather forecasts are those that predict weather conditions for three to 15 days into the future.

AIFS can provide detailed forecasts for wind, temperature and precipitation and, according to the Center, and should perform up to 20% better than today’s modern physics-based models. The model will also be faster and consume a thousand times less energy.

Traditional physics-based weather forecasts are made by solving physical equations, but these are only a simplification of the dynamics of the atmosphere. AI-driven models have an advantage because they can find more complex relationships and dynamic patterns directly from the data.