Researchers are Using Machine Learning to Better Predict Weather Patterns

Caitlin Dempsey

Updated:

The enormous amount of data from Earth-observing satellites is pushing researchers to use machine learning to mine weather information and improve climate models.  Researchers are using this area of artificial intelligence to discover new climate patterns and understand how climate change is shifting them.

In 2016, researchers first used machine learning to identify tropical cyclones, atmospheric rivers and weather fronts [1].  This same research team is now studying how to use machine learning to find and predict extreme weather patterns and understands shifts in climate.

More: How machine learning could help to improve climate forecasts, Nature, August 23, 2017.

Images correctly identified as tropical cyclones by machine learning. From: Liu et. al, 2016.
Images correctly identified as tropical cyclones by machine learning. From: Liu et. al, 2016.

Reference

Liu, Y., Racah, E., Correa, J., Khosrowshahi, A., Lavers, D., Kunkel, K., … & Collins, W. (2016). Application of deep convolutional neural networks for detecting extreme weather in climate datasets. arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.01156.

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About the author
Caitlin Dempsey
Caitlin Dempsey is the editor of Geography Realm and holds a master's degree in Geography from UCLA as well as a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from SJSU.