WeatherNext 2 is Google’s most accurate forecasting model, now used by Pixel Weather & Search

Google DeepMind and Google Research today announced WeatherNext 2 as its “most advanced and efficient forecasting model.” Notably, it’s helping power forecasts in Google’s consumer apps, including Pixel Weather.

At a high-level, “WeatherNext 2 can generate forecasts 8x faster and with resolution up to 1-hour.” It can predict wind speed and direction, precipitation, pressure, and other weather variables.

This model’s main advancement is predicting “hundreds of possible weather outcomes from a single starting point.” This includes “low-probability, but catastrophic, weather events.” Similar predictions would previously take “take hours on a supercomputer using physics-based models,” but can now be done in under a minute using a single TPU and this AI approach.

Under-the-hood, WeatherNext 2 generates four 6-hour forecasts per day. The model’s input is the “most recent global weather state.” A Functional Generative Network (FGN) is then used to produce slightly different forecasts, with those generated predictions then fed back into the model.

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WeatherNext 2 surpasses Google’s previous model “on 99.9% of variables (e.g. temperature, wind, humidity) and lead times (0-15 days).”

The company has now incorporated WeatherNext technology and models “into the core forecasting system that powers all of Google’s weather features.” As such, you will see more accurate weather forecasts in Search, Gemini, Pixel Weather, and soon Google Maps. 

Meanwhile, businesses, scientists, and developers can access WeatherNext 2 via Google Cloud Vertex AI, Big Query, and Earth Engine. Looking ahead, Google will be “integrating new data sources, and expanding access even further.”

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