Sick of bumpy, delayed flights? New weather tech could help

It may be a tough summer to fly. More passengers than ever will be taking to the skies, according to the Transportation Security Administration. And the weather so far this year hasn’t exactly been cooperating. A blizzard warning in San Diego, sudden turbulence that injured 36 people on a Hawaiian Airlines flight bound for Honolulu, a 25-inch deluge of rain that swamped an airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.: The skies have been confounding forecasters and frustrating travelers. And it may only get worse as the climate continues to change. “Intense events are happening more often and outside their seasonal norms,” said Sheri Bachstein, chief executive of the Weather Company, part of IBM, which makes weather-forecasting technology. So, will flights just get bumpier and delays even more common? Not necessarily. New sensors, satellites and data modeling powered by artificial intelligence are giving travelers a fighting chance against more erratic weather. The travel industry “cares about getting their weather predictions right because weather affects everything,” said Amy McGovern, director of the National Science Foundation’s A.I. Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate and Coastal Oceanography at the University of Oklahoma. Those better weather predictions rely on a type of artificial intelligence called machine learning, where in essence, a computer program is able to use data to improve itself. In this case, companies create software that uses historical and current weather data to make predictions. The algorithm then compares its predictions with outcomes and adjusts its calculations from there. By doing this over and over, the software makes more and more accurate forecasts.<br/>