Nowcasting on Search is now live for users in Africa, Techeconomy can authoritatively report.
The feature released by Google in nowcasting in Search will display for weather searches across the continent with more precision than ever before.
What problem is Nowcasting on Search meant to solve?
One critical component for weather forecasts is dense ground radar, which is not available for the majority of the world where billions of people live, according to a blog post by Emmanuel Asiedu Brempong, research Engineer, Google Research Africa, and Shreya Agrawal, software engineer, Google Research.
The need for new approaches and better weather forecasts is especially pronounced in Africa, where ground observations are limited and global weather models tend to exhibit low skill. For example, North America has 291 radar facilities to track weather, while Africa has 37.
“To scale nowcasting in search globally, our Research teams came up with an innovative new approach using globally available satellite observations in our nowcasting models.”
“Using AI and satellite observations, the model was able to fill in the gaps, even in areas where radar was unavailable, overcoming previous limitations in data sparse regions. It is also our first model to directly incorporate observations from a multitude of satellites”, the blog post reads.
Using MetNet, an advanced model, precipitation is predicted with high accuracy via satellite data. This fills gaps in radar coverage, providing better weather insights and enhancing the search experience across the continent.
