AI-powered weather nowcasting has hit Africa, thanks to Google

Several places in the world are fortunate enough to have advanced weather prediction technology, while others aren’t so lucky. Unfortunately, Africa doesn’t have as much access to data collection and forecasting technologies as some other places in the world, and this could make predicting the weather difficult. Well, Google launched its nowcasting weather model in Africa.

Surprisingly, AI can be used for more than just generating videos of a toddler beating up Pikachu (yes, that’s an actual video). It can also serve a purpose outside of stealing jobs from artists, and one of them is helping to predict the weather. Several places in the world have all of the proper forecasting tools at their disposal, but predicting the weather in other places can be difficult.

Well, Google has a new “nowcasting” (forecasting, but for predicting a shorter timespan) model called MetNet. Much like a language model, MetNet needs to be trained on certain data in order to give the proper results.

Google brought weather nowcasting to Africa

Among all of the questionable things that Google is doing with AI, it’s actually doing things that help the world. Over in Africa, it can be pretty tough to know what’s going to happen with the weather, and that can be a major issue for people who farm.

Well, Google will help out with a valuable tool. It’s a model called MetNet, and it can be a boon for nowcasting. The thing with traditional forecasting is that it’s not great for short-term predictions. If you want to know whether you’ll need to take an umbrella or a sunhat during your trip to the market, you won’t be able to do that with a typical forecasting model. It can take several hours to generate a forecast.

Google’s model is useful for determining the weather in the short term. This way, people can know the proper times to leave the house or stay home. They’ll know the proper times to plant their seeds or hang their clothes. The sky’s the limit with this sort of technology.

High accuracy

According to the company, the model can predict global precipitation with high accuracy. Using MetNet, residents in Africa will be able to get accurate predictions every 15 minutes within a five-kilometer radius over the next 12 hours. The model can also generate them all in under a minute, so there won’t be that long of a wait.

Users in Africa can now use the nowcasting feature using Search. Users will get information using the Weather feature.

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