China Economic Review: How Artificial Intelligence Responds to Climate Change Disasters | Global | Review
The summer solstice has arrived. Last summer's heatwave is still vividly remembered by many people, as it was the hottest summer in China since 1961. Nowadays, the frequent occurrence of extreme weather such as high temperature rainstorm around the country makes people worry: will this summer be hotter than last year?
From a data perspective, the trend of global temperature rise is quite evident. Although the La Ni ñ a phenomenon in the previous three years temporarily put a brake on global temperatures, the past eight years remain the hottest on record. Among them, 2016 was the hottest year on record worldwide. Currently, multiple institutions predict that 2023 or 2024 is highly likely to surpass 2016, setting a new global record for the warmest weather.
How should humans respond to climate change? Some scientists are hoping for the current booming artificial intelligence.
To address climate change, the first step is to identify symptoms and have the ability to accurately analyze and predict weather. But this is not an easy task, and artificial intelligence can precisely demonstrate its skills in the field of meteorological prediction.
In April of this year, China released the artificial intelligence model "Fengwu", which achieved effective forecasting of core atmospheric variables for more than 10 days at high resolution for the first time. In terms of forecast accuracy, compared to traditional physical models, the 10 day forecast error of "Fengwu" has decreased by 19.4%; From the perspective of forecast timeliness, the best physical model HRES globally has a maximum effective forecast duration of 8.5 days, while "Fengwu" has reached 10.75 days; From the perspective of resource efficiency, existing physical models often need to run on supercomputers, while the "Fengwu" large model can run on a GPU and generate high-precision global forecast results for the next 10 days in 30 seconds.
From the practice of "Fengwu", it can be seen that the application of artificial intelligence in the field of meteorology, mining patterns from big data, can complement traditional mathematical equations, and provide more accurate and practical weather forecasts for production and life. Climate change will make extreme weather more frequent, and artificial intelligence can be used to improve meteorological disaster warning systems, achieve early and accurate warning, and play a greater role in disaster prevention and reduction.
To address climate change, in the long run, it is also necessary to "root out" and take various mitigation measures to address the causes of climate change. Many scientists believe that climate change is closely related to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon emissions. As long as the consumption of fossil fuels in human society does not decrease, the trend of climate change will not stop.
Strengthening the application of artificial intelligence can achieve more precise, stable, and effective emission reduction. Artificial intelligence, as an important auxiliary tool for energy transformation, is increasingly integrated into energy management in industrial systems and home life, improving energy utilization efficiency, reducing peak demand, and maximizing the use of renewable energy. In addition, in fields such as nuclear fusion, new energy materials, and carbon capture and storage utilization, artificial intelligence can also accelerate the development of these green technologies by leveraging its advantages in data analysis, modeling, and prediction.
The Boston Consulting Group has predicted in its research report that in order to achieve the goal of limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5 ℃ proposed in the Paris Agreement, countries must reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2030. The use of artificial intelligence can help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2.6 to 5.3 billion tons, accounting for 5% to 10% of the total emissions reduction.
If artificial intelligence is seen as a prescription, then it also has limitations and side effects. For example, the artificial intelligence model itself is a major energy consumer, which will increase carbon emissions. When it works simultaneously with the human brain, the energy consumption of the human brain is only 0.002% of that of the machine.
Artificial intelligence is one of the emerging strategic technologies leading the future, and climate change is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world today. The revolution of artificial intelligence and the revolution of green energy are advancing hand in hand, and have become the technological high ground that major countries must seize in competition. We look forward to both greener and more environmentally friendly artificial intelligence, as well as smarter and more controllable green energy, just as we hope that summer will no longer be scorching and unbearable.