Microsoft’s New AI Weather Tool

Microsoft has developed a high-tech weather tool.

Researchers at the big tech company have unveiled Aurora, an AI model that could transform weather forecasting and air pollution monitoring on a global scale.

Scientists say by leveraging vast amounts of atmospheric data and innovative deep learning techniques, Aurora produces highly accurate predictions at unprecedented speeds, paving the way for a new era in environmental modeling.

For example researchers say the AI system can generate a 5-day global air pollution forecast and a 10-day high resolution weather forecast in under 1 minute, outperforming traditional numerical models, and its computational speed is estimated to be 5,000 times faster than the integrated forecasting system.

Other companies like Google have also developed a competing AI forecasting system called graph cast but researchers say Aurora has outperformed rivals on most metrics. One of the key strengths of Aurora lies in its extensive pre-training process; the model was trained on over a million hours of diverse weather and climate simulations enabling it to develop a comprehensive understanding of atmospheric dynamics.