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BBC picks new weather partner after 93 years with the Met Office
Although it's been almost a year since the BBC announced its 93-year partnership with the Met Office was coming to an end, the broadcaster didn't have replacement lined up at the time. During those months, it has considered bids from various new providers and ran what it calls "an open competition" to select a supplier who would appease licence payers by delivering high-quality services while keeping costs low. Today, the BBC confirmed that Netherlands-based Meteogroup was able to meet those requirements, allowing it to take over from the Met Office from spring 2017.
IBM's AI can predict how we'll react to the weather
According to the "butterfly effect" theory, weather is inherently hard to predict. But IBM thinks that if you throw even more computing smarts and data at it, you should be able to at least improve forecasts. Big Blue is marrying its own hyper-local weather models with global ones from (its own) The Weather Company and creating Deep Thunder, the best-named forecasting system ever. To analyze all the data, the company is building new deep-learning algorithms and training them using petabytes of historical data.
NASA aims to predict dust storms on Mars
If NASA is going to send people to Mars, it needs to predict the planet's weather. You don't want to land in the middle of a ferocious storm that wipes out your entire mission. Thankfully, the space agency just took a step toward making that happen. It's now detecting patterns in large regional dust storms by studying high-altitude (16 miles) temperature data from its orbiters. As dusty air tends to be much hotter at those heights, it's easy to tell when a giant regional storm is flaring up -- you just look for hot patches and their effects on the wind.
Dark Sky brings its 'hyperlocal' weather forecasts to Android
Dark Sky has been a darling of the iOS app scene for years. It has a nice design, and all the features you'd expect from a weather app, but its unique selling point is "hyperlocal" reports that can pinpoint rain to the minute. To do this, it "statistically aggregates" data from 19 meteorological sources, as well as from users themselves. Although the competition has improved in recent years, and despite being a paid app in a sea of free alternatives, it remains on many a "best weather app" list.
Windows 10 update message interrupts live weather report
Microsoft made Windows 10 a recommended upgrade for previous versions, and users have reported the desktop operating system asking about a download without warning. There have even been reports of the software installing itself without user consent. It can be rather annoying, and a meteorologist at KCCI in Des Moines observed that first hand. During a live weather report, a pop-up appeared prompting the control room to update to Windows 10. As you can see, these messages are bit more intrusive than the notifications on other platforms, like Apple's OS X for Mac.
Yes, someone made a smart clothes peg
It seems nothing is safe from the Internet of Things revolution. The latest attempt to make a household object smarter is Peggy, a connected clothes peg by Australian detergent brand OMO. A few basic components sit inside its orange shell, including a thermometer, UV sensor and humidity detector. These track the weather outside and, in the case of impending rain, trigger timely alerts to your phone over WiFi. So if the clouds roll in and you're busy with something else -- maybe you're out of the house, but someone else is indoors -- you won't be left with soggy washing.
Smart umbrella tells you when it's going to rain
Everything is connected these days, so why not an umbrella? Oombrella is an upscale parasol that alerts you if it's going to rain before you head outside and reminds you not to leave it behind. That's a neat idea, but is it worth a $75 (€64) bet on Kickstarter? Clement Guillot (above), the Paris-based entrepreneur behind it certainly thinks so, and was recently at the Hacking Hôtel de Ville event in Paris to find more backers. I was able to check out the device and found it to be a charming use of connected tech, though the price may dissuade many folks.
Ocean waves and temperatures can predict extreme summer heat
Predicting the weather typically caps out around 10 days in advance for certain factors, but a new study could extend that up to almost two months. By measuring the surface temperature of oceans from 1982 to 2015, specifically in 2012, The New York Times writes that a team of researchers (PDF) noticed correlations between a pair of precursors leading to hotter days in parts of North America: precipitation deficits and "anomalous atmospheric wave trains." The former is pretty easy to understand. The latter, standard parts of atmospheric flow caused by wind, are abnormal patterns of crests and troughs leading to shore.
Google's mobile app gets more detailed weather info on Android
You can now get more detailed info about the weather from Google's standalone Android app. In an effort to help people better prepare, the search giant has revamped its interface with new climate-related tidbits that'll be useful for everyone. Starting today, the Google app will display an array of fresh data, such as severe weather alerts (pictured above), 10-day forecasts, hourly sky conditions and what the chances of rain are, among other things. This update also lets you set multiple favorite locations, in case you'd like to access information regarding these at a later time.
Watch SpaceX attempt a sea-based landing at 1:42PM ET
Flush with success from its first ground landing, SpaceX is about to make history again... well, maybe. The private space firm is scheduled to launch the ocean-monitoring Jason-3 satellite today (January 17th) at 1:42PM ET, and it hopes to once again attempt landing a Falcon 9 rocket on its drone barge. If everything goes ahead as planned, it'll be the first successful sea landing ever -- and SpaceX can put those unpleasant crashes behind it. You can watch the company's official stream below, while NASA TV has live coverage running before and during liftoff. Update: Unfortunately, the landing wasn't successful. [Image credit: SpaceX Photos, Flickr]
Microsoft's Xiaoice AI becomes the first live TV weather host
Even though machines can now generate clickbait headlines and automatically write earthquake news reports in the name of journalism, live television has remained shielded from artificial intelligence. That hasn't stopped Microsoft from trying to influence proceedings with its machine learning software, known as Xiaoice (or Little Bing), which became the first AI robot to host a segment on live TV last week.
China launches a disaster prevention satellite
Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, is reporting that the nation has launched its "most sophisticated observation satellite," ever. Gaofen-4 is reportedly the country's first geosynchronous high-definition imaging satellite and has been designed to watch over us and keep a look out for natural disasters. The craft will also, as part of China's earth observation project, help out with weather prediction and forest monitoring. It's the fourth of seven planned craft, each one expected to zoom around the planet for upwards of eight years. The name may not ring a bell, but it was a Gaofen satellite that recorded footage of what was thought to be debris from MH370.[Image Credit: China Foto Press / Getty]
Watch Pluto's mesmerizing space weather
Ever wondered what the cosmic weather is like, especially around more distant worlds? NASA's happy to help. It recently published a simulation of the Solar System's weather (specifically the Sun's flares, winds and other behaviors) around the time New Horizons swung by Pluto. The color-coded imagery, which reflects the density, pressure and temperature of outgoing plasma, is more than a little hypnotic -- the plasma slowly spirals out, with coronal mass ejections creating shockwaves (the blue you see above) that travel to the farthest reaches of the system.
Commerce Department gets its first ever Chief Data Scientist
Want proof that US officials are taking data seriously? Just look at the Commerce Department. It's following in the White House's footsteps by hiring its first ever Chief Data Scientist, Jeff Chen. He'll make sure that the department is making the most of data across the many, many fields it covers: he could improve predictions for severe weather, for example, or help modernize the US' creaky patent system. Chen certainly has the experience to back it up, having worked with everyone from NASA to the White House's own Office of Science and Technology Policy. There's only so much he can do in the new role, but it won't be surprising if he gets the wheels of government turning considerably faster. [Image credit: Getty Images]
Scientists chart Mach 7 winds on a Jupiter-sized exoplanet
When scientists discovered a Jupiter-sized exoplanet in the Vulpecula constellation, they knew the weather there wasn't great. That's because HD 189733b orbits its star every 2.2 days at a speed of 341,000 mph and has an average surface temperature of around 2,240 F. A team from the University of Warwick in the UK has now made a rough weather map of the body -- the first ever for a planet outside our solar system -- and that news ain't great, either. Using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument located in Chile, the team calculated that winds on HD 189733b rage at 5,400 mph, or seven times the speed of sound.
IBM is buying The Weather Company's tech to integrate with Watson
IBM's Watson AI has been a Jeopardy champion and a very creative chef, next up, Watson the weather man. Well, sort of. IBM just announced that it plans to acquire The Weather Company's products and technology, which includes Weather.com and The Weather Underground, all of which will serve as the backbone of the new Watson Internet of Things unit. The Weather Channel isn't part of the deal, but it will license data and analytics from IBM. While weather is the key word with this acquisition, the real driving force behind it is data -- and lots of it. The Weather Company's mobile apps are the fourth-most popular in the US, processing 26 billion requests daily, according to IBM. That gives Watson, and IBM's other cloud services, a rich library of data to analyze and process. The Weather Company also built up a large platform to handle all of that juicy information, which IBM will be able to take advantage of.
Social media users give UK storms the most British names ever
Last month, the Met Office announced it would begin naming the storms that batter the UK and Ireland and asked social media users to put their suggestions in the hat. By giving them a moniker, the weather service hopes that people will track storms when they hit our rainy isles and raise awareness of their impact. That list has now been finalised, and as expected, we've done ourselves proud.
ICYMI: Weather in a box, cyborg drummer and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-596751{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-596751, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-596751{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-596751").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: The world's biggest 3D printer was just unveiled in Italy and it's a hefty 40 feet tall and 20 feet in diameter, earning its name, "Big Delta." Its intended purpose is to build mud huts for emergency housing. A device called the Tempescope can be synced with an app in your home and actual rain or show condensation for fog, depending on the day's weather forecast. And a drummer who lost his right arm is back in the game, fiercer than before, with help from a robotics professor.
The Tempescope ambient weather display is coming to Indiegogo
The team behind the Tempescope has announced that they're launching an Indiegogo campaign for the device at the end of the month. The Tempescope is an "ambient weather display" that shows you tomorrow's weather with physical examples. That is, if it's going to be cloudy with light showers, the device itself will generate clouds and precipitation within its plexiglass cube. The current version of the device can recreate rain, clouds and lightning (though they're still working on getting it to snow). The team will be offering 2000 units at $200 a pop starting September 30th. Now if only there were a way to wire it up to your BloomSky.
BBC to stop using Met Office weather data after 93 years
For almost a century, the Met Office has supplied the BBC with weather data for its daily forecasts. Its predictions aren't always correct, and they're often a depressing end to TV news bulletins, but they hold an important role in British culture. Until now, that is. The BBC says it's looking for an alternative provider "to make sure we secure both the best possible service and value for money." The Met Office, an executive agency under the UK's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, has called the news "disappointing."