8/24/2020 How artificial intelligence can tackle climate change | National Geographic

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How artificial intelligence can tackle climate change

The biggest challenge on the planet might benefit from machine learning to help with solutions. Here
are a just a few.

1 9 J U LY 2 0 1 9 ,
BY JAC K I E S N OW

Steam and smoke rise from the cooling towers and chimneys of a power plant. Artificial intelligence is being used to prove the case that
plants that burn carbon-based fuels aren't profitable.
P H OTO G R A P H BY RO B B K E N D R I C K , N AT G E O I M AG E C O L L E C T I O N

Climate change is the biggest challenge facing the planet. It will need every solution possible, including
technology like artificial intelligence (AI).
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8/24/2020 How artificial intelligence can tackle climate change | National Geographic

Seeing a chance to help the cause, some of the biggest names in AI and machine learning—a discipline
within the field—recently published a paper called “Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning.” The
paper, which was discussed at a workshop during a major AI conference in June, was a “call to arms” to
bring researchers together, said David Rolnick, a University of Pennsylvania postdoctoral student and one of
the authors.

“It's surprising how many problems machine learning can meaningfully contribute to,” says Rolnick, who
also helped organise the June workshop.

The paper offers up 13 areas where machine learning can be deployed, including energy production, CO2
removal, education, solar geoengineering, and finance. Within these fields, the possibilities include more
energy-efficient buildings, creating new low-carbon materials, better monitoring of deforestation, and
greener transportation. However, despite the potential, Rolnick points out that this is early days and AI can’t
solve everything.

“AI is not a silver bullet,” he says.

And though it might not be a perfect solution, it is bringing new insights into the problem. Here are three
ways machine learning can help combat climate change.

Better climate models

This push builds on the work already done by climate informatics, a discipline created in 2011 that sits at the
intersection of data science and climate science. Climate informatics covers a range of topics: from
improving prediction of extreme events such as hurricanes, palaeoclimatology, like reconstructing past
climate conditions using data collected from things like ice cores, climate downscaling, or using large-scale
models to predict weather on a hyper-local level, and the socio-economic impacts of weather and climate.

AI can also unlock new insights from the massive amounts of complex climate simulations generated by the
field of climate modelling, which has come a long way since the first system was created at Princeton in the
1960s. Of the dozens of models that have since come into existence, all look at data regarding atmosphere,
oceans, land, cryosphere, or ice. But, even with agreement on basic scientific assumptions, Claire
Monteleoni, a computer science professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder and a co-founder of climate
informatics, points out that while the models generally agree in the short term, differences emerge when it
comes to long-term forecasts.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” Monteleoni said. “They don't even agree on how precipitation will change in
the future.”

One project Monteleoni worked on uses machine learning algorithms to combine the predictions of the
approximately 30 climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Better
predictions can help officials make informed climate policy, allow governments to prepare for change, and
potentially uncover areas that could reverse some effects of climate change.

Showing the effects of extreme weather

Some homeowners have already experienced the effects of a changing environment For others it might
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8/24/2020 How artificial intelligence can tackle climate change | National Geographic
Some homeowners have already experienced the effects of a changing environment. For others, it might
seem less tangible. To make it more realistic for more people, researchers from Montreal Institute for
Learning Algorithms (MILA), Microsoft, and ConscientAI Labs used GANs, a type of AI, to simulate what
homes are likely to look like after being damaged by rising sea levels and more intense storms.

“Our goal is not to convince people climate change is real, it’s to get people who do believe it is real to do
more about that,” said Victor Schmidt, a co-author of the paper and Ph.D. candidate at MILA.

So far, MILA researchers have met with Montreal city officials and NGOs eager to use the tool. Future plans
include releasing an app to show individuals what their neighborhoods and homes might look like in the
future with different climate change outcomes. But the app will need more data, and Schmidt said they
eventually want to let people upload photos of floods and forest fires to improve the algorithm.

“We want to empower these communities to help,” he said.

Measuring where carbon is coming from

Carbon Tracker is an independent financial think-tank working toward the UN goal of preventing new coal
plants from being built by 2020. By monitoring coal plant emissions with satellite imagery, Carbon Tracker
can use the data it gathers to convince the finance industry that carbon plants aren't profitable.

A grant from Google is expanding the nonprofit’s satellite imagery efforts to include gas-powered plants’
emissions and get a better sense of where air pollution is coming from. While there are continuous
monitoring systems near power plants that can measure CO2 emissions more directly, they do not have
global reach.

“This can be used worldwide in places that aren’t monitoring,” said Durand D’souza, a data scientist at
Carbon Tracker. “And we don’t have to ask permission.”

AI can automate the analysis of images of power plants to get regular updates on emissions. It also
introduces new ways to measure a plant’s impact, by crunching numbers of nearby infrastructure and
electricity use. That’s handy for gas-powered plants that don’t have the easy-to-measure plumes that coal-
powered plants have.

Carbon Tracker will now crunch emissions for 4,000 to 5,000 power plants, getting much more information
than currently available, and make it public. In the future, if a carbon tax passes, remote sensing Carbon
Tracker’s could help put a price on emissions and pinpoint those responsible for it.

“Machine learning is going to help a lot in this field,” D’souza said.

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