The Indian Meteorological Department intends to use AI models to enhance forecasting, especially for extreme weather events like droughts and floods.
Top local weather official says the Indian government is experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) in developing climate models to predict severe weather.
The head of climate research and services at the India Meteorological Department (IMD), K.S. Hosalikar, stated in a Reuters story that he anticipates AI-based climate models and advisories to help improve forecasting, especially for severe weather conditions like floods and droughts.
At the moment, supercomputers and mathematical models are used by the IMD to forecast. It claimed that using AI could produce weather data that is both more affordable and of higher quality.
AI is already being used, according to Hosalikar, to assist in the creation of public alerts for severe weather events like heatwaves and disease outbreaks like malaria. He added that in order to obtain higher-resolution forecasting data, the IMD intends to expand the number of weather observatories all the way down to the village level.
In addition to organising conferences and workshops, the government has already established a centre to test the concept of integrating AI into conventional weather forecasting.
With India’s diverse weather patterns, accurate weather forecasting is especially important because the country’s 1.4 billion people will be more and more impacted by extreme heat waves, droughts, and flooding.
India is the world’s second-largest producer of rice, wheat, and sugar, and it contributes significantly to global agricultural production.
Sims Witherspoon, the lead for climate action at DeepMind at Google, presented a new framework at the most recent Wired Impact Conference in London. It is titled “Understand, Optimise, Accelerate” and it outlines steps for using artificial intelligence (AI) to address climate change.
Emerging technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrency have already been used by the weather forecasting industry to maximise the gathering of meteorological data. Hundreds of decentralised weather stations have already been set up globally by the startup WeatherXM to gather local data and then give station owners utility tokens.