Pixel Weather and Google Maps are getting a massive forecasting boost

Google is giving its weather tools a major upgrade. the company has announced WeatherNext 2, its most advanced AI-powered weather forecasting model to date. According to Google, WeatherNext 2 will make weather information in the Pixel Weather app, Google Search, Gemini, and Google Maps more accurate and more useful.

Google claims WeatherNext 2 can generate forecasts eight times faster than before and provide hour-level resolution. This means your Pixel phone and Google Maps (with Search and Gemini) will soon provide more accurate, hour-by-hour updates about temperature, wind, humidity, and more.

This speed increase comes from WeatherNext 2’s ability to simulate hundreds of possible weather outcomes. Traditionally, weather agencies rely on supercomputers running physics-based models to make these predictions, and even then, it takes hours to get accurate results. Google’s method generates these scenarios on a single TPU chip in less than a minute.

WeatherNext 2 is also designed to capture a wider range of possible outcomes. This could make predictions of extreme weather conditions like hurricanes or cyclones faster and more accurate.

Google says WeatherNext 2 outperforms the previous version on 99.9% of weather changes over the next 0-15 days.

Because WeatherNext 2 is being integrated into Google’s weather tools, apps like Pixel Weather and Google Maps should start giving better short-term predictions as well as more accurate real-time forecasts. Apps should be more able to notify users about sudden weather events, such as rain, heatwave or changes in wind.

That said, Google hasn’t provided any details about the improvements or new features coming to these apps. All we know right now is that WeatherNext 2 is coming to all of Google’s consumer-facing weather forecasting services, along with the aforementioned upgrades.