Google Announces GenCast – New AI for Weather Forecasting

Artificial intelligence used to predict the weather is not exactly new. However, Google DeepMind just announced GenCast, a model that can predict the weather.

GenCast’s AI model considers the likelihood of multiple scenarios to accurately estimate trends, from wind power generation to the movement of tropical cyclones. GenCast’s probabilistic method is a new frontier in using AI to provide better, faster daily weather forecasts.

What’s new about GenCast’s approach compared to previous machine learning models is its use of so-called ensemble forecasts representing different outcomes, a technique used in modern traditional weather forecasting. GenCast was trained using the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) database, which has been built up over four decades.

Google says it plans to release both the code and the GenCast weather weights and forecasts to make it easier to implement and use.