Machine learning may be a game-changer for climate prediction

In a paper recently published online in Geophysical Research Letters (May 23), researchers led by Pierre Gentine, associate professor of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia Engineering, demonstrate that machine learning techniques can be used to tackle this issue and better represent clouds in coarse resolution ( 100km) climate models, with the potential to narrow the range of prediction. "This could be a real game-changer for climate prediction," says Gentine, lead author of the paper, and a member of the Earth Institute and the Data Science Institute. "We have large uncertainties in our prediction of the response of the Earth's climate to rising greenhouse gas concentrations. The primary reason is the representation of clouds and how they respond to a change in those gases. Our study shows that machine-learning techniques help us better represent clouds and thus better predict global and regional climate's response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations."