Traditional forecasting still beats AI for the most extreme weather

AI outperforms traditional weather forecasting in many cases. But a new study shows that when it matters most, current AI models still need to overcome a fundamental flaw.

[Photos: NASA, USGS/Unsplash, Joe Dudeck/Unsplash, Todd Trapani/Unsplash]

AI is being touted as the future of weather forecasting—faster and more precise. But new research shows a major blind spot: it often fails at predicting extreme weather. Traditional physics-based models still do better.

“They do perform well on a lot of tasks, but for very extreme events—that are the most important for society—they still struggle,” says Sebastian Engelke, a statistics professor at the University of Geneva and one of the authors of a new study in Science that pitted some of the leading AI........

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