Google has announced a €4.5m investment to advance AI-powered weather forecasting and climate research in Ireland.
The funding will come from Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org.
At the centre of the commitment is a new four-year scientific research initiative that will bring together technologies including Google Earth AI, satellite imagery and real-time local observations from a new school-based network of weather stations to be deployed across Ireland.
The initiative will deploy 560 solar-powered weather stations in schools across all 26 counties, creating a high-density network of real-time, ground-level weather observations.
All the data will be freely available on the internet reporting every minute, with teachers provided with training and lesson plans to ensure that students use the data to maximum effect.
As part of the investment, the AIMSIR Centre via UCD Foundation, Ireland’s first dedicated AI weather research centre, will receive €2.25m in funding.
The funding will create the Climate+ School Weather AI Network (SWAN), delivered by the AIMSIR Centre in partnership with Met Éireann and the Climate+ Co-Centre.
The project will receive further support from the Irish Schools Sustainability Network, the Irish Science Teachers’ Association, and Scoilnet, the official education portal of the Department of Education and Skills.
“Combining the expertise of Ireland’s research community, new tools, and real-time weather observations from schools across the country will improve local forecasting for the kinds of severe storms and flash floods we saw last year,” said Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs at Google and Alphabet.
“Making long-term forecasts more accurate will help people be prepared for whatever the weather throws at them,” Mr Walker said.
Professor Andrew Parnell, Director of the AIMSIR Centre and Met Éireann Professor of Data Science for Climate and Weather at UCD, said that what is important about the project is that none of the data will be locked away.
“Every reading from every school, the designs for the stations themselves and the code we write to make sense of it all will be published openly and free to use,” Professor Parnell said.
“A student in Donegal will be able to see the rain falling on their own school a minute after it lands, and a student anywhere in Ireland will be able to use that same data for their own projects too,” he added.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin welcomed the investment from Google.
“By bringing together our schools, researchers, Met Éireann and the incredible technology expertise we have in Ireland, we have the potential to improve our understanding of our weather while giving young people an opportunity to participate directly in science and innovation,” Mr Martin said.