Meteorologists have gotten pretty damn good at forecasting a hurricanes track. But they still struggle to calculate when it will intensify, as its seriously hard to understand whats happening inside atropical cyclone.

A new machine learning model developed by NASA could dramatically improve their calculations,and give people in a hurricanes path more time to prepare.

Scientists at the space agencys Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California developed the system after searching through years of satellite data.

They discovered three strong signalsthat a hurricane will become more severe: abundant rainfall inside the storms inner core; the amount of ice water in the clouds within the tropical cyclone; and the temperature of the air flowing away from the eye of the hurricane.

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The team then used IBM Watson Studio to build a model that analyzes all these factors, as well as those already used bythe National Hurricane Center, a US government agency that monitors hazardous tropical weather.

The researchers trained the model to detect when a hurricane will undergo rapid intensification which happens when wind speeds increase by 56 kmph or more within 24 hours on storms that swept across the US between 1998 and 2008. They then tested iton a separate set of stormsthat hit the country from 2009 to 2014. Finally, they compared the systems forecasts to the model used by the National Hurricane Center for the latter set of storms.

The teamsays their modelwas 60% more likely to predict a hurricanes winds would increase by at least 56 kmph within 24 hours. But for hurricanes whose windsshot up by at least 64 kmph, the new system had a 200% higher chance of detecting these events.

The team is now testing the model on storms during the current hurricane season. If that proves successful, it could help minimize the loss of life and property caused when futuretropical cyclones hit.

You can read a research paper on the modelin the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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Published September 3, 2020 10:23 UTC

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NASAs impressive new AI can predict when a hurricane intensifies - The Next Web