MetNet

MetNet is an AI model for weather forecasting built by Google. While traditional weather forecasting relies on complex physics-based calculations that can take hours, MetNet trains on vast amounts of past satellite and radar imagery to quickly figure out where rain will move and how intense it will be over the next few hours.

In simple terms, it's like an AI trained on massive amounts of data to mimic what an experienced weather observer does when they glance at the sky and say, "With clouds like that, we'll get a shower here in 30 minutes." Instead of precise physical calculations, it reads patterns to produce fast answers.

The model has resurfaced in the news recently because someone who worked on the project was mentioned in connection with a move to a different AI startup.

In articles, it appears in passages describing someone's past career, such as "Espeholt was part of the team that worked on Google's weather forecasting AI model MetNet." MetNet itself isn't the main topic — the name comes up in the context of introducing a person's background as they moved to a new company, and missing this can lead to misreading the flow of the article.