{"id":21712,"date":"2026-09-11T08:01:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T08:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/?p=21712"},"modified":"2026-09-11T08:01:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T08:01:59","slug":"researchers-eye-ai-revolution-in-natural-disaster-forecasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/8657085.xyz\/?p=21712","title":{"rendered":"Researchers eye AI revolution in natural disaster forecasts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <div style=\"display: grid; grid-template-columns: 300px 160px; gap: 2px; width: 460px; background: #eee; padding: 2px;\">\r\n\r\n  <!-- \u6574\u884c\u5bbd\u5e7f\u544a -->\r\n  <div style=\"grid-column: 1\/-1; width: 460px; height: 250px; background: #ccc; display: grid; place-items: center;\">\r\n  <script async type=\"application\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/a.magsrv.com\/ad-provider.js\"><\/script> \r\n <ins class=\"eas6a97888e2\" data-zoneid=\"5876674\"><\/ins> \r\n <script>(AdProvider = window.AdProvider || []).push({\"serve\": 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style=\"padding-right:0;padding-left:0\">\n<p>A revolution in forecasting natural disasters is underway, say researchers in Switzerland who are training AI models on vast troves of NASA climate data to produce potentially-lifesaving data at lightning speed.<\/p>\n<p>They are feeding the NASA file stash into one of the world\u2019s most powerful supercomputers so artificial intelligence can speed up and expand vital weather and climate forecasting, and spot patterns scientists could not have seen.<\/p>\n<p>AI models are increasingly used in weather and climate forecasting and for early detection of natural hazards.<\/p>\n<p>As well as speed, they carry the promise of spotting previously imperceptible patterns in satellite and other data, potentially making it possible to flag in advance disasters like Nepal\u2019s devastating flood, which last month left thousands dead or missing.<\/p>\n<p>But training such AI models requires vast amounts of high-quality climate and Earth observation data, and significant computing power.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at Switzerland\u2019s Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) say they now have both, after copying around 100 petabytes of publicly available NASA data onto servers adjacent to one of the world\u2019s most powerful supercomputers, known as Alps.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a huge scientific opportunity,\u201d said Thomas Schulthess, an ETH computational physics professor and head of\u00a0the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in the southern city of Lugano.<\/p>\n<p>Standing in front of rows of what look like giant filing cabinets that contain Alps, he told AFP he was excited to have all of NASA\u2019s climate data plugged directly into the machine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s really enabling scientists to do things we would not even have thought of before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Data is \u2018everything\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n<p>It took approximately a year to copy the roughly six billion NASA files onto servers connected to the supercomputer, said Reto Knutti, a climate physics professor who heads ETH\u2019s Center for Climate Systems Modeling (C2SM).<\/p>\n<p>That is equivalent to around 20 million feature-length films in terms of data volume, or around a million times the storage on a typical computer, he told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>Now the researchers are using the mass of information to develop AI models that can speed up and expand vital weather and climate forecasting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cData is essentially everything,\u201d Knutti said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe next step will be making sense of the data\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>That is where the proximity to the massive computing power of Alps comes in, Schulthess said, nodding to the clusters of servers humming loudly just metres (feet) from the supercomputer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt matters whether you can move the data within a few seconds or whether you have to wait days for the data to come,\u201d he said<\/p>\n<p>New AI-generated statistical models are far faster than the traditional process of using mathematically equations to simulate the complex processes taking place in the oceans and atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>There is \u201ca revolution in weather forecasting\u201d, Knutti said, describing the statistical models as \u201creally, really powerful\u201d and \u201cincredibly fast\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 \u2018Save lives\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n<p>Instead of the hours traditionally needed to produce a forecast, a statistical model\u00a0based on pattern recognition \u201ccan run a global weather forecast for multiple days \u2014 the whole globe \u2014 in a minute or so\u201d, he pointed out.<\/p>\n<p>And while expensive to train, the models are \u201ccheap to run\u201d, he said, meaning \u201cyou can do more iterations, maybe every few minutes, to see if some specific weather pattern exists\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat allows us to do early warning systems to save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not all disasters are foreseeable but those that relate to geology, like landslides and glacier collapses, can often be detected early in the data, if there is capacity to spot the pattern.<\/p>\n<p>Kutti pointed to the case of the Swiss village of Blatten, which was wiped out by a dramatic glacier collapse in May last year, \u201cthat was visible in satellite data more than a year before it actually happened\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to close monitoring, Swiss authorities evacuated the village a week before the collapse, avoiding mass casualties.<\/p>\n<p>Closer monitoring could also possibly have sounded the alarm before the devastating August 26 glacial collapse on the Nepal-China border.<\/p>\n<p>Nature reported last week satellite image analysis showed some warning signs before the disaster, which, had they been spotted, could have flagged the area \u201cas a hotspot warranting closer attention and monitoring\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Knutti agreed that this was a good example of how satellite data could potentially be used for \u201csystematic observing systems for disaster prevention that could save hundreds or thousands of lives\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- \u603b\u5bb9\u5668\uff1a\u6700\u5927\u5bbd908px Grid\u7d27\u51d1\u5e03\u5c40 -->\r\n<div style=\"display: grid; grid-template-columns: 728px 160px; gap:2px; width:908px; background:#eee; padding:2px;\">\r\n\r\n  <!-- \u901a\u680f\u9876\u90e8\uff1a\u6700\u5927\u6a2a\u5e45 908x258 \u8de8\u6574\u884c -->\r\n  <div style=\"grid-column:1\/-1; height:258px; background:#ff6b6b; display:grid; place-items:center;\">\r\n    <!-- JuicyAds v3.0 -->\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" data-cfasync=\"false\" async src=\"https:\/\/poweredby.jads.co\/js\/jads.js\"><\/script>\r\n<ins id=\"1114307\" data-width=\"908\" data-height=\"258\"><\/ins>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" data-cfasync=\"false\" async>(adsbyjuicy = window.adsbyjuicy || []).push({'adzone':1114307});<\/script>\r\n<!--JuicyAds END-->\r\n  <\/div>\r\n\r\n  <!-- \u7b2c\u4e8c\u901a\u680f\uff1a728\u00d790 \u901a\u680f -->\r\n  <div 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researchers in Switzerland who are 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