GPU-maker Nvidia has unveiled Earth-2 API that is designed to predict climate change globally by utilizing AI supercomputers for simulations.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced Earth-2 Cloud Platform on Monday at the company's annual developer conference being held in in San Jose, California.
Earth-2, initially announced in 2021, is now fully operational.
It will provide APIs for simulating and visualising weather and climate on a vast scale, promising more precise forecasts and timely alerts, reported Venture Beats.
"Climate disasters are now normal — historic droughts, catastrophic hurricanes and generational floods appear in the news with alarming frequency," said Huang. "Earth-2 cloud APIs strive to help us better prepare for — and inspire us to act to moderate — extreme weather."
Earth-2 is adaptable software capable of running on different supercomputers, with its forecasting accuracy determined by the computing power provided by partners. The product's aim is to predict climate changes for the coming decades.
Earth-2, according to Nvidia, helps one get "accelerated, AI-augmented, high-resolution climate and weather simulations with interactive visualization."
Powered by advanced AI models, such as the CorrDiff generative AI model, Earth-2 is integrated into the Nvidia CUDA-X microservices software. It generates high-resolution simulations at speeds 1,000 times faster and with 3,000 times greater energy efficiency compared to current numerical models.
"In scientific computing, climate research remains a grand challenge," said Rev Lebaredian, vice president of simulation at Nvidia, in a press briefing.
"We are announcing our Earth 2 platform for interactive, high resolution climate and weather prediction. Extreme weather events cost $140 billion in economic losses every year. Affordable climate simulations are too high level."
He added, "We need kilometre-scale simulations to really make an impact. Longer scale simulation is costly, requiring a million times the compute. [It’s] a cloud platform for government agencies, weather forecasters, and prediction agencies to accelerate weather employment prediction."
Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration is one of the first to use Earth-2's diffusion models to improve typhoon forecasts. The agency's goal is to reduce casualties by evacuating early.
"Taiwan is a critical component of the global supply chain, and flooding risk analysis and evacuation preparedness are core to our mandate," said Chia-Ping Cheng, administrator of CWA, in a statement.
According to the country's National Science and Tech Centre for Disaster Reduction, it would be using Earth-2 to lessen the impact of the 136 typhoons that have hit the island since 2000.
Earth-2 is also compatible with Nvidia Omniverse, allowing organisations such as The Weather Company to build 3D workflows using real weather data.
Nvidia Omniverse is a platform that enables collaboration and simulation across various industries, including architecture, and engineering, entertainment.
It provides a unified environment where users can work with 3-D assets, models, and simulations, regardless of the software they were created in.
US-based Weather Company said it intends to use Earth-2 APIs to create more detailed simulations and develop new weather modelling products, enhancing weather intelligence services for businesses.
The Weather Company, known for its weather forecasts, aims to merge its meteorological data and Weatherverse tools with Omniverse.
"We’ve worked with Nvidia for years on GPU acceleration of GRAF, our proprietary weather modeling systems, and we plan to adopt Earth-2 APIs to create higher resolution, energy-efficient simulations at a lower cost," said the company CEO Sheri Bachstein in a statement.
Comments