America's Top Climate Research Facility Is Being Destroyed

Dozens of climate research and forecast operations exist worldwide. The gold standard is the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Office at NOAA. The New York Times reports that the budget for this arm of the government will be cut from $485 million last year to $170 million.

The Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Office is key to the methods for forecasting dangerous storms. It also studies the effects of ocean warming. One scientist told the Times that weather science would reverse to levels last seen in the 1950s.

Violent Storms

The cuts cannot be underestimated, particularly when it comes to storms. Forecasts for hurricanes and tornadoes remain imperfect, endangering human life and property. The cuts would also undermine grants given to outside climate scientists.

There is a chance, not one that is predictable, that AI will be able to perform some of these functions and might improve their accuracy. Forecast models exist already, which their creators say are superior to current science.

One of the two AI weather forecasting projects is from Nvidia, and the other is from Google. Google’s is part of its DeepMind project. Called GraphCast, it “predicts weather conditions up to 10 days in advance more accurately and much faster than the industry gold-standard weather simulation system…”

Will AI Fix Forecasting?

Nvidia product is called FourCastNet, and it “is a data-driven, generative AI-based weather prediction model that matches the accuracy of the gold standard in numerical weather prediction…”

If the federal government cuts the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Office, AI may replace it.