AI improves weather prediction, and cutting emissions from landfills
Nov 16, 2023
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Discover how artificial intelligence has revolutionized weather forecasting, using fewer resources. Explore the overlooked source of methane emissions from waste sites and potential solutions. Dive into the role of landfills in climate change and the significance of managing municipal waste. Learn about strategies to mitigate methane emissions and their impact in staying within the 1.5-degree Celsius limit.
Artificial intelligence models have become shockingly good at forecasting the weather, matching or exceeding the accuracy of traditional models while using less computational resources.
Municipal solid waste, including landfills and garbage dumps, is a significant source of methane emissions that contribute to climate change, but effective management strategies such as biogas capture and waste reduction can significantly decrease these emissions.
Deep dives
Advances in AI Improving Weather Forecasting
Artificial intelligence models are now showing impressive results in weather forecasting, matching or even exceeding the accuracy of traditional models. These AI models, trained on large datasets of weather data, have learned to recognize patterns and predict future weather conditions. They are able to achieve similar forecasting performance to the top weather models used by European agencies, but at a fraction of the computational cost. This breakthrough in AI weather forecasting has the potential to revolutionize the field and make forecasting more cost-effective and accessible.
Solid Waste as a Major Source of Methane Emissions
Municipal solid waste, including landfills and garbage dumps, is a significant and often overlooked source of methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane released from decomposing organic waste in landfills contributes to climate change. However, effective management strategies can help reduce these emissions. Retrofitting landfills with biogas capture, diverting organic waste for composting or anaerobic digestion, and reducing waste generation can significantly decrease methane emissions from the solid waste sector. By implementing these mitigation strategies, greenhouse gas emissions from global solid waste can be reduced by 27% to 70% relative to business as usual, helping to meet climate goals.
Challenges and Solutions for Mitigating Solid Waste Emissions
To achieve significant reductions in methane emissions from solid waste, policymakers need to implement a combination of direct regulation, economic incentives, and social tools. Direct regulation can include laws mandating waste segregation, while economic incentives can encourage waste reduction and recycling efforts. Social tools, such as education campaigns, can help promote environmental values and encourage communities to generate less waste. By adopting these policy tools and accelerating the adoption of waste management strategies, countries can make progress towards meeting the global methane pledge and achieving a net-zero warming scenario in the global solid waste system.
What it means that artificial intelligence can now forecast the weather like a supercomputer, and measuring methane emissions from municipal waste
First up on this week’s show, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how artificial intelligence has become shockingly good at forecasting the weather while using way fewer resources than other modeling systems. Read a related Science paper.
Next, focusing on municipal solid waste—landfills, compost centers, garbage dumps—may offer a potentially straightforward path to lower carbon emissions. Zheng Xuan Hoy, a recent graduate from the new energy science and engineering department at Xiamen University Malaysia, discusses his Science paper on this overlooked source of methane and some plausible solutions for reducing these emissions.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.