For as long as humans have wanted to know what the weather was going to do next, we’ve looked to technology to help us work out which atmospheric dynamics are portents of changing conditions.
From the 17th-century invention of the barometer to 21st-century Earth observation satellite radar, forecasting the weather has developed broadly apace with advances in engineering and science.
Generations of supercomputers have for decades been crunching through the massive datasets needed to inform weather forecasts, typically using Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models – objective calculations of changes to the mapped weather founded on physics-based mathematical equations. However, even the most advanced petaflop-powered compute platforms have limitations and are not necessarily the best way to meet the growing and diversifying demand for advance notice of impending weather events.
NWP processes take their time, and in some use cases, a faster forecast delivery...