Storm clouds threaten a promised AI revolution in weather prediction

“It’s an absolutely unbelievable scientific achievement,” says Andrew Charlton-Perez, talking to me by video from his office at the University of Reading, UK. His colleague, Simon Driscoll at the University of Cambridge, nods enthusiastically. “There are so many different applications and so many different uses for it.”

No, they aren’t referring to quantum computing or nuclear fusion. They are talking about weather prediction. “People just moan about the weather forecast and how bad it is,” says Charlton-Perez. As a meteorology professor, he hears this a lot. But that is because most people…