Computer scientists predict lightning and thunder with the help of artificial intelligence

One of the core tasks of weather services is to warn of dangerous weather conditions. These include thunderstorms in particular, as these are often accompanied by gusts of wind, hail and heavy rainfall. The Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) uses the "NowcastMIX" system for this purpose. Every five minutes it polls several remote sensing systems and observation networks to warn of thunderstorms, heavy rain and snowfall in the next two hours. "However, NowcastMIX can only detect the thunderstorm cells when heavy precipitation has already occurred. This is why satellite data are used to detect the formation of thunderstorm cells earlier and thus to warn of them earlier," explains Professor Jens Dittrich, who teaches computer science at Saarland University and heads the "Big Data Analytics" group.