Met Éireann and UCD join forces to use AI in weather forecasting

Waves crash against the sea wall in Tramore, Co Waterford, earlier this year.  The Met Éireann-UCD project aims to bridge the gap between research and operations by examining the context of high-impact weather, flood forecasting, and the understanding of Ireland's climate.

Social media posts could end up being part of Met Éireann’s weather predictions under a new project involving artificial intelligence (AI). 

The national forecaster is about to embark on a multi-million euro AI partnership with University College Dublin (UCD).

This will see weather chiefs developing ways to use AI as an extra tool to improve their forecasting, including monitoring Irish weather posts on social media.

The aim of the partnership with the UCD School of Mathematics and Statistics and the college's Earth Institute is to see how best to "marry existing forecasting techniques with AI".

The project has been set up to bridge the gap between research and operations by examining the context of high-impact weather, flood forecasting, and the understanding of Ireland's climate.

The development of AI models and techniques throughout the five-year partnership will enable Met Éireann to build on existing forecasting capabilities.

The overall aim is to "help to make Ireland even more weather and climate prepared for the future”.

One of the applications will be to capture social media chatter about the weather in various parts of the country from posts on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

It will be an extension of the way the forecaster already uses data from people who contribute to the Weather Observations Website.

This features a combination of weather observations from privately owned weather stations and official National Meteorological Service weather stations.

“Gathering information on social media, gathering information from right across society, will help us to prepare our forecasts and enable a better informed impact-oriented forecasting system," said Met Éireann director Eoin Moran.

“The Irish people have always had a very strong relationship, socially and scientifically, with the weather because of the position we live in.

“We're in the battleground of multiple different air masses, with a very changeable climate.

Social media platforms can be a very useful source of information on particular impacts and artificial intelligence, clearly, is a method for gathering that information.”

UCD’s interim vice-president for research Helen Roche said: “The emergence of AI provides an opportunity to enhance our forecasting capabilities.

"UCD researchers will help develop AI-enhanced models to enable Met Éireann to build on its forecasting capabilities and make Ireland even more weather- and climate-prepared.

“This ground-breaking partnership between UCD and Met Éireann will help ensure we have the tools and expertise needed to tackle the climate emergency."