The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is testing artificial 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 mentioned.
Global warming has triggered extra intense clashes of climate techniques in India in latest years, growing excessive climate occasions, which the unbiased Centre for Science and Environment estimates have killed practically 3,000 folks this yr.
Weather businesses world wide 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 typical 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 remark community may assist generate higher-quality forecast information at decrease value.
The division expects the AI-based local weather fashions and advisories it’s growing to assist enhance forecasts, Ok.S. Hosalikar, head of local weather analysis and providers at IMD, instructed Reuters.
The climate workplace has used AI to generate public alerts relating to heatwaves and such illnesses as malaria, Hosalikar mentioned. It plans to extend climate observatories, offering information right down to village stage, probably providing higher-resolution information for forecasts, he mentioned.
The authorities mentioned 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 concept by 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,” mentioned Saurabh Rathore, an assistant professor at Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi.
Better information can also be wanted to take advantage of out of AI, consultants say.
“Without having high-resolution data in space and time, no AI model for location-specific magnification of existing model forecasts is feasible,” mentioned Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay, a local weather scientist on the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
