Nvidia has virtually recreated the entire planet — and now it wants to use its digital twin to crack weather forecasting for good

Faster and more accurate weather forecasts are about to become a real possibility across the globe thanks to a new release from Nvidia.

The computing giant has announced a new digital twin cloud platform that it says will help meteorologists and weather experts create richer and more detailed simulations and more.

The new Earth-2 APIs, unveiled at Nvidia GTC 2024, can be utilized to help address the $140 billion cost in losses around the world due to extreme weather brought on by climate change, with Nvidia saying work can now begin on an “unprecedented scale”.

Whatever the weather

“Climate disasters are now normal — historic droughts, catastrophic hurricanes and generational floods appear in the news with alarming frequency,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Earth-2 cloud APIs strive to help us better prepare for — and inspire us to act to moderate — extreme weather.”

Nvidia says the new models are set to be used by governments and organizations across the world, including the Taiwan Central Weather Administration, which aims to utilize better detection of typhoon landfall, with earlier predictions of such incidents meaning citizens can be evacuated quicker.

The Earth-2 cloud APIs will run on Nvidia DGX Cloud, opening them up to all kinds of users to create high-resolution simlations.

They use a new Nvidia generative AI model called CorrDiff which is able to generate 12.5 times higher resolution images than current numerical models 1,000x faster and 3,000x more energy efficiently, as well as correcting inaccuracies from previous models, bringing together multiple sources of information to create much more accurate and focused forecasts.