IBM introduced it’s new global weather forecasting system at CES 2019 on Tuesday. The IBM Global High-Resolution Atmospheric Forecasting System (GRAF) was created with subsidiary The Weather Company using supercomputers and crowdsourced data.
IBM introduced it’s new global weather forecasting system at CES 2019 on Tuesday. The IBM Global High-Resolution Atmospheric Forecasting System (GRAF) was created with subsidiary The Weather Company using supercomputers and crowdsourced data.
Weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable with accurate weather forcasts a holy grail for farmers, airlines, shipping, disaster managers and energy providers. One of the issues is providing accurate and timely data. GRAF is an hourly-updating commercial weather system, most weather models run every 6 and 12 month intervals.
One just has to look at the natural gas hub futures price chart below to show how inaccurate weather forecasts can be and with devastating results to hedgers and speculators.
The crowdsourced data is from millions of sensors around the world and in-flight data to create the forecasts. It can predict things as small as thunderstorms globally IBM said.
IBM CEO Ginny Rometty said the system will be available later this year. “If you’re a farmer in Kenya, if you’re a farmer in Kansas, you’re going to get a way better weather prediction,”
While the resulting volume of data would be too much for most supercomputers, this powerful new model analyzes data using IBM POWER9 technology, which is behind the U.S. Department of Energy’s Summit and Sierra, the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The crowd source data is intended to overcome data blackspots given in many parts of the world weather forecasts cover just 12- to 15-kilometer expanses of land, thus weather phenomena might be missed. Think about the forecasts for the Alaska ridge and it’s signicance for North AMerican weather and how much actual land mass basis is missed.
GRAF will provide forecasts covering 3 square kilometers and will update hourly. GRAF’s ability to tap into data from aircraft sensor readings such as wind speeds and temperature is though to overcome the lack of specialized weather equipment in certain parts of the world.
Think waze for your traffic report, here people can also opt in to share pressure sensor readings from barometers in their phones, which will help improve the forecasts.
Anyone with The Weather Channel app, weather.com, Weather Underground app and wunderground.com will be able to use the forecasts. Businesses that use IBM offerings from The Weather Company can also access them. IBM also unveiled its Q System One on Tuesday, which the company said is the world’s first integrated quantum computing system for both scientific and commercial use. IBM Q System One is significant because it can operate beyond a research lab.
Source: Newswire CES
From The TradersCommunity News Desk