Artificial intelligence alone won't solve the complexity of Earth sciences

Simulating and predicting cloud convection is a particularly bedevilling problem in studies of Earth systems.Credit: Frank Bienewald/LightRocket/Getty Barely a day goes by without a promise that artificial intelligence (AI) will revolutionize yet another aspect of life. Research fields ranging from speech recognition to biological imaging are embracing and benefiting from techniques such as deep learning. But for some fields, integrating AI is not straightforward. The study of Earth -- and its climate, oceans and biogeochemistry -- is one of them. The amount of geospatial data available on these systems has exploded, with remote sensors above Earth and below the seas generating terabytes of data. But it's a challenge for even the most advanced AI to make sense of systems that are so highly complex and -- with weather being a prime example -- change rapidly with space and time.