GrainsWest Fall 2020

Fall 2020 grainswest.com 9 BY CULLEN BIRD “It’s very difficult to get computer forecast models to be accurate for more than, let’s say, five to seven days down the road; things change in the Prairies very quickly.” —Drew Lerner Major improvements to ECCC’s radar station system will cer- tainly improve the nation’s weather forecasting. The department will spend more than $131-million to replace 27 of its 31 radar stations with new installations twice as large and powerful. One new radar site will be built in Fort McMurray. Twelve of these new stations are now complete, while the remaining 16, including the Fort McMurray site, will be ready to go in the months leading up to 2023. The new facilities will have greatly increased range and employ dual polarization technology, which uses both horizontal and vertical radar pulses to build detailed 3D imagery of weather systems and anomalies. This will help ECCC meteorologists distinguish between vari- ous types of precipitation and provide better advanced warning, said Kulak. Indiscernible to conventional radar, the new system can detect the hamburger shape of falling raindrops and the round shape of hail pellets. NEWWEATHER MODELLING SYSTEMS Short-horizon weather predictions are the focus of a new arti- ficial intelligence (AI) “nowcasting” technology developed by Google. In January, Google announced it has developed a pro- gram that uses machine learning and historical image analysis to make one-to-six-hour rainfall predictions. Traditional numerical computer models require up to six hours to analyze huge amounts of data to make long-term forecasts. “Optical flow” models use image analysis to predict a storm’s path, but do not take into account how much power it naturally loses over time. Google researchers claim the AI program outperforms both numerical and optical flow models when making predictions one hour into the future. However, numerical models outper- formed the nowcasting AI with predictions six hours or more into the future. Google announced the release of MetNet in March. The new forecasting tool utilizes nowcasting and can predict weather up to eight hours into the future across the continental U.S. The company has not announced if and when it might deploy MetNet in Canada. Weather prediction models such as MetNet based on deep neural networks have the potential to benefit farmers and the agriculture sector by improving the overall quality of forecasts, said Google brain researcher Nal Kalchbrenner, a member of the Google deep learning AI team. MetNet may also benefit farmers “by dramatically increasing the resolution of forecasts in terms of their spatial granularity and their interval frequency, and by being able to easily analyse weather data in combination with agricultural data. [This can produce] agriculture-specific predictions beyond the core weath- er domain,” said Kalchbrenner. While there are exciting possibilities in international meteorol- ogy, additional innovations are being made closer to home. Gathering weather data is one thing, interpreting and analyz- ing it is another, said Lerner. “The Canadian government has opted to not adequately staff the relevant field offices across the Prairies,” he said. This has been the situation for more than a decade, he added. Though ECCC employs the right people, the department doesn’t have the manpower to provide comprehensive analysis and quality control for long-range forecasts, he said. An ECCC representative said in an email that it is adequately staffed to meet its mandate and “exerts control” over its long- term forecasts. “Staffing levels at forecast centres nationwide allow the delivery of ECCC’s mandate and during times of increased weather activity, additional staff from other locations may be called upon to assist with surge demand,” the email read. Overall, Canada’s weather prediction technology has under- gone big improvements. ECCC is working on forecast computer models very comparable to new models in other countries, according to Lerner. “We’re definitely advancing and I don’t want to give the impression that Canada is years behind the rest of the world; that’s not the case,” he said. Despite the increase in data variety and quantity such radar improvements will bring, Kulak said he is not concerned about interpreting the date he receives. “In general, yes, there’s going to be a lot of data coming in,” he said, adding meteorologists will require more training to handle it appropriately. Lerner emphasizes the many improvements being made to weather forecasting are good news. “There’s a lot to be excited about,” he said. Photo:CourtesyofWorldWeather Inc.