The business of predicting the weather

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The  recent flash floods in Texas  underscore that lives are at risk from the extreme weather events that climate change has made more common. And researchers have found that shorter forecast lead times since 2009 have prevented hundreds of millions of dollars in hurricane damage – per storm.

Even beyond headline-making events, the weather next week has economic implications. Businesses of all stripes make or lose money based on the forecast: retailers with far-flung supply chains, energy companies moving fuels around the country, even baseball teams watching for a rainout.

New data sets released by public weather agencies were ideal for training deep-learning software, and researchers using it upended the weather ecosystem. In 2022, teams at chipmaker Nvidia and Chinese tech giant Huawei demonstrated that machine learning could forecast accurately

Qn: To what extent is artificial intelligence the answer to the world’s most pressing problems? (ACJC 2020)