[HN Gopher] GPUs open the potential to forecast urban weather fo...
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       GPUs open the potential to forecast urban weather for drones and
       air taxis
        
       Author : giuliomagnifico
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2021-09-29 19:49 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (news.ucar.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (news.ucar.edu)
        
       | carabiner wrote:
       | Run this for mountains, ski resorts so we know exactly which
       | areas/runs will be most windy.
        
       | cryptoz wrote:
       | Well this is the coolest thing I've seen in weather tech in a
       | while. I wonder if they will pair this with additional city-level
       | data collection - anemometers/mini weather stations on the sides
       | of buildings, etc. I'm the barometer-data-from-phones guy running
       | All Clear on Play Store US:
       | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearwe...
       | 
       | with an interest in hyperlocal weather forecasting.
       | 
       | I didn't see much about forecast accuracy in this article, but,
       | still, extremely cool. I do wonder how much accuracy is possible
       | - you cannot necessarily know how trucks and other human-caused
       | short-term atmosphere changes will affect the weather.
        
       | billiam wrote:
       | This seems a bit much to enable good pizza delivery. The funders
       | seem more interested in urban airflows for bioweapons attacks or
       | other slightly more critical problems.
        
       | quocanh wrote:
       | This might enable simulation but forecasting is a chaotic problem
       | isn't it? It's essentially like trying to predict a stream of
       | random numbers - even if they follow a certain attractor, it's
       | still impossible to know exactly what form they'll take.
        
         | zardo wrote:
         | Forecasting is done, and it's done by creating ensembles of
         | weather simulations.
         | 
         | Weather is chaotic, which is why forecast accuracy rapidly
         | drops off the further out in time you make predictions. But
         | still, they can be accurate enough far enough out into the
         | future to be extremely useful.
        
         | dragontamer wrote:
         | Partial differential equations over multiple dimensions is
         | innately chaotic, with exponential error bounds (the longer any
         | simulation goes, the exponentially bigger the errors get).
         | 
         | But getting more-and-more accurate predictions is the goal of
         | any weather modeler. If the exponential error bounds gives you
         | currently 1-day worth of predictions before the models go to
         | crap... maybe an improved algorithm (or 10x more compute power)
         | can get you 2-days worth of predictions instead.
         | 
         | Even if you don't get a major change (maybe going from 1 day
         | worth of predictions to 1.1 days of predictions), you might be
         | able to convert that into 1/10th the compute power needed (ex:
         | lower the accuracy down to 1-day prediction but cut back
         | dramatically on the compute-power needed to perform the
         | simulation).
        
       | tppiotrowski wrote:
       | "CPUs excel at performing multiple tasks, including control,
       | logic, and device-management operations, but their ability to
       | perform fast arithmetic calculations is limited. GPUs are the
       | opposite. Originally designed to render 3D video games, GPUs are
       | capable of fewer tasks than CPUs, but they are specially designed
       | to perform mathematical calculations very rapidly."
       | 
       | I thought the advantage of the GPU is not speed but parallelism
       | or are modern power saving processors also slow compared to GPUs
       | on non-parallel tasks?
       | 
       | Also, is it common to use Registered Trademarks (FastEddy) in a
       | paper these days. I know a lot of universities try to
       | commercialize research, is this the reason for the trademark?
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-29 23:00 UTC)