How AI can make weather forecasting better and cheaper

Meteorology poses considerable challenges for AI systems, and only a few weather authorities have experimented with it. Most countries haven’t had the resources to try. — AFP

In early February a black box crammed with computer processors took a flight from California to Uganda. The squat, four-foot-high box resembled a giant stereo amp. Once settled into place in Kampala, its job was to predict the weather better than anything the nation had used before.

The California startup that shipped the device, Atmo AI, plans by this summer to swap it out for a grander invention: a sleek, metallic supercomputer standing eight feet tall and packing in 20 times more power. “It’s meant to be the iPhone of global meteorology,” says Alexander Levy, Atmo’s co-founder and chief executive officer.