Featured image: Typhoon Hagibis approaches Japan in 2019. The storm was one of the events used to study the accuracy of an AI-based forecasting system.Credit: NASA Worldview, Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS)/AP/Alamy

Google DeepMind has developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) model of its kind to predict the weather more accurately than the best system currently in use. The model generates forecasts up to 15 days in advance — and it does so in minutes, rather than the hours needed by today’s forecasting programs.

The purely AI system beats the world’s best medium-range operational model, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ ensemble model (ENS), at predicting extreme weather such as hurricanes and heatwaves. The breakthrough could help usher in an era of AI weather forecasting that is quicker and more reliable than today’s systems, researchers say. The system, called GenCast, is described today in Nature.