The linked article is for SIAM News, the magazine for members of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). As such, I included some mathematical content, but I tried to write the piece so that you could gloss over that bit without losing the gist of the story. In any case, this is an example of using AI/machine learning to help save lives instead of depriving people of their livelihoods, so please read and share it!
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Neural Networks May Provide Warnings Ahead of Deadly Heat Waves
For SIAM News:
A series of terrible heat waves struck Europe in the summer of 2022, resulting in more than 20,000 deaths across the continent. In 2021, heat waves led to unprecedented wildfires in both Siberia and the Pacific Northwest, stressing already vulnerable ecosystems. In 2008 and 2010, extreme heat events throughout Asia killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Climate change is increasing both the frequency and severity of deadly heat waves. The most devastating heat events on historical record have all occurred in the past few decades and are unlike anything in the existing paleo-climatological data, which extends back to the dawn of humanity.
“Because of climate change, heat waves that were exceptional [in the past] might become common,” Freddy Bouchet, a climate researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, said. In other words, the human-driven changes in global climate are causing heat waves to happen more often and reach higher temperatures. However, the rarity of previous extreme heat waves makes it difficult for scientists to predict future occurrences — even as they become more common.
Bowler Hat Science 