The weather ...

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Good and bad, AI's everywhere,. This time it's the good as it seems Google's Deep Mind's at it again, this time, forecasting the weather with a degree of accuracy better then current predictors of same. 

To whit.

In a significant advance for improving weather forecast accuracy, Google DeepMind scientists have developed a weather model that largely beats the world's most accurate modeling system.

Why it matters: The new model provides — for the first time — a machine learning-driven method of conducting ensemble-based forecasting, in which the same model is run with many different initial conditions, to generate probability-based projections.

Previous AI models only resulted in a take-it-or-leave-it projection (also known as a deterministic model), rather than a range of outcomes.

Driving the news: Google DeepMind researchers told reporters on Monday that the model shows skill in anticipating extreme events outside the bounds of what occurred during the training period.

This last sentence gives one pause as this is also a vital aspect of creativity where one constantly goes outside the bounds of the project at hand when creating something of true significance.

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

The race between weather agencies to see who has the most advanced computer models has given way to an international competition over implementing artificial intelligence.

Driving the news: The U.K. Met Office, which already runs one of the top weather forecast models in the world, announced a new partnership on Tuesday with the Alan Turing Institute to develop highly accurate, lower cost forecast models using machine learning and AI techniques.

Rather than being run on supercomputers and based on the physics of how the atmosphere works, AI-driven weather models are instead trained on historical data and don't need to be run on supercomputers.

They use current data, algorithms and other techniques to then determine what weather systems are likely to do.

In the U.S., NOAA is also examining how its forecasters can utilize AI, and it is finding novel, low-hanging fruit applications such as translating its forecasts into multiple languages.

Between the lines: Companies such as Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and Huawei have shown progress in advancing weather forecasting through AI during the past two years, claiming their models meet or beat the top-rated model out of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

Of course Google's not alone but the betting pool's on Deep Mind as they have a data repository connected to scientific and medical content no other company has.