Model mixes AI and physics to do global forecasts

Enlarge / Image of some of the atmospheric circulation seen during NeuralGCM runs. (credit: Google)

Right now, the world's best weather forecast model is a General Circulation Model, or GCM, put together by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. A GCM is in part based on code that calculates the physics of various atmospheric processes that we understand well. For a lot of the rest, GCMs rely on what's termed "parameterization," which attempts to use empirically...