China’s Weather Superpower Bid Takes Aim at Top AI Model Dataset

China’s push to be a weather superpower has seen authorities accelerate efforts to end reliance on a European dataset, promoting a homegrown alternative for the era of artificial intelligence-fueled forecasting.

Europe’s ERA5 is considered the benchmark of climate data, providing details on a range of variables such as rainfall, temperature and wind, spanning more than eight decades. It has been the backbone of the AI revolution in weather forecasting so far, and some of the leading AI models in China, including from Huawei Technologies Co., are trained using the product.