With the Atlantic hurricane season nearly over, a new champion has emerged in predicting both track and intensity of hurricanes: Google DeepMind.
According to preliminary analysis by Brian McNoldy, a senior researcher at the University of Miami, Google's AI models had the lowest mean position error in measuring the track of all 13 named storms this year from 0 to 120 hours. See the "Track Verification" chart below (lower lines are better because they signify lower errors).
Google's models also consistently beat all models other than the National Hurricane Center's official forecast (OFCL) in forecasting hurricane intensity. See the "Intensity Verification" graph, which shows Google and OFCL running essentially neck-in-neck for all forecasts between 0 and 120 hours (again, lower line is better).
Google's experimental Weather Lab service launched in June of this year, so this was the first hurricane season for which Google's AI models made forecasts. This is a really remarkable result!