This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Today's best weather computers would still have struggled to accurately predict the weather for the D-Day landings, University of Reading research shows. The new research, published in the journal Weather ahead of the release of the D-Day film "Pressure," used AI models to produce 50 different forecasts of the storm that famously pushed back the Allies' invasion of Normandy in June 1944.
The researchers checked how confident the AI model was in its forecast of the weather Group Captain James Stagg had to predict on June 5 and 6. For June 5, the day originally planned for the invasion, the model got the storm's position right and correctly predicted poor conditions over Normandy, matching Stagg's own analysis. For June 6, the model predicted the storm would move toward Norway, bringing calmer weather, albeit much more quickly than what really happened.
Professor Andrew Charlton-Perez, lead author of the study at the University of Reading, said, "Captain James Stagg had one of the hardest jobs in history. Get the forecast wrong, the invasion could have failed and the Second World War could have been lost. "Some Allied meteorologists were insistent the weather would be fine for the invasion to take place as planned on June 5, after weeks of hot weather.
Our research shows Stagg would likely have defied his colleagues and made the same call to delay if he had the AI forecast to support him. The AI pointed to a real risk of dangerous winds on June 5, enough to justify delaying the invasion by a day. "The AI incorrectly predicted June 6 would be much calmer and clearer than it really was, as soldiers faced more treacherous weather.
Stagg believed the conditions were fair enough on June 6, leading Eisenhower to give his famous order, 'OK, we'll go.' "AI weather forecasts can process huge amounts of data in seconds, but they can still make mistakes. Having a trained meteorologist to make sense of all of the forecast data and make forecasts based on their knowledge and experience remains just as critical today as it was for the D-Day landings." The extraordinary story of how Stagg had to determine whether the weather would be good enough to let 160,000 troops cross the Channel and storm the beaches of Normandy on June 5 is now the subject of a Hollywood film called "Pressure," starring Andrew Scott as Stagg and Brendan Fraser as Eisenhower. In the film, Stagg has to balance advice from different forecasting teams that disagree about how a storm in the North Sea will affect the invasion.
Researchers compared the model with what actually happened over the Channel and the Normandy beaches, using weather records from the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Weather records from 1944 were limited, so the researchers also compared the forecasts with newly found paper weather logs for the Faroe Islands from an archive at the Met Office. These islands are close to the path the storm took on its way past Britain, so the readings kept there in 1944 capture the storm at a point the main records miss.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
