OTTAWA, April 9 (Xinhua) -- Environment and Climate Change Canada said Thursday it will combine artificial intelligence (AI) with traditional forecasting methods to make its weather forecasts more accurate.
Through this strategic use of AI, Canada is enhancing public safety, improving emergency readiness, and giving Canadians more time to act to high-impact weather, said the ministry in a news release.
It said AI models learn how the atmosphere behaves by analyzing decades of historical data from entire continents in just minutes and that the hybrid model predicts extremes, such as strong winds or heat waves, more accurately.
With the new hybrid model, the six-day forecast will be as accurate as the five-day forecast is now, with improvements in large-scale accuracy, which will translate into predictions of major weather systems from 8 to over 24 hours earlier.
Over the past year, Environment and Climate Change Canada scientists and meteorologists have been carrying out extensive testing on the hybrid model, running it in parallel with the traditional model to evaluate its performance for predicting weather conditions in Canada, said the release. ■
