Google just gave Pixel Weather and Maps a massive forecasting boost

Google is giving its weather tools a major upgrade. The company has announced WeatherNext 2, its most advanced AI-powered weather forecasting model yet. According to Google, WeatherNext 2 will make weather information in the Pixel Weather app, Google Search, Gemini, and Google Maps more accurate and more useful.

Google claims WeatherNext 2 can generate forecasts eight times faster than before and delivers hour-level resolution. That means your Pixel phone and Google Maps (along with Search and Gemini) will soon provide much more precise and up-to-the-hour updates about things like temperature, wind, humidity, and more.

This speed boost comes from WeatherNext 2’s ability to simulate hundreds of possible weather outcomes. Traditionally, weather agencies rely on supercomputers running physics-based models to make these predictions, and even then, it takes hours for accurate results. Google’s method generates these scenarios on a single TPU chip in less than a minute.

WeatherNext 2 is also designed to capture a wider range of possible outcomes. This can make predicting extreme-weather conditions, such as storms or cyclones, faster and more accurate.

Google says WeatherNext 2 outperforms the previous version on 99.9% of weather variables across the next 0–15 days.

Because WeatherNext 2 is being integrated into Google’s weather tools, apps like Pixel Weather and Google Maps should start delivering more accurate real-time forecasts, along with better short-term predictions. The apps should become more capable of informing users about sudden weather events, such as rain, heatwaves, or wind changes.

That said, Google hasn’t detailed any specifics of the improvements or new features coming to these apps. All we know right now is that WeatherNext 2 is coming to all of Google’s consumer-facing weather prediction services, along with the aforementioned upgrades.