Nowcasting the next hour of rain

Our lives are dependent on the weather. At any moment in the UK, according to one study, one third of the country has talked about the weather in the past hour, reflecting the importance of weather in daily life. Amongst weather phenomena, rain is especially important because of its influence on our everyday decisions. Should I take an umbrella? How should we route vehicles experiencing heavy rain? What safety measures do we take for outdoor events? Will there be a flood? Our latest research and state-of-the-art model advances the science of Precipitation Nowcasting, which is the prediction of rain (and other precipitation phenomena) within the next 1-2 hours. In a paper written in collaboration with the Met Office and published in Nature, we directly tackle this important grand challenge in weather prediction. This collaboration between environmental science and AI focuses on value for decision-makers, opening up new avenues for the nowcasting of rain, and points to the opportunities for AI in supporting our response to the challenges of decision-making in an environment under constant change.