Explainer: How AI helps combat climate change

Kenya United Arab Emirates

NEW YORK, 03 November 2023 / PRN Africa / -- The recent launch of the UN-led AI Advisory Body advanced a growing global trend to harness machine learning to find solutions to common challenges. AI is upping the data crunching game and a growing number of governments, businesses and civil society partners are working together to reap its many benefits.

That includes speeding up and scaling efforts to realize such global ambitions as the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which serve as the world’s blueprint to make the planet greener, cleaner and fairer.

Ahead of the latest UN Climate Change Conference (COP 28), which begins at the end of November in Dubai, UN News looks at how AI helps the world, from communities to corporations to law makers, tackle climate change:

Weather

AI-driven technologies offer previously unheard-of capabilities to process enormous volumes of data, extract insightful knowledge and improve predictive models, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

That means improved modelling and predicting climate change patterns that can help communities and authorities to draft effective adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Several UN agencies support vulnerable communities in Burundi, Chad and Sudan through an AI-driven project to investigate past environmental change around displacement hotspots and deliver future projections to inform adaptation measures and anticipatory action for integration in humanitarian programming.

On the ground, enhanced data can be a game-changer. For instance, the MyAnga app helps Kenyan pastoralists brace for drought. With data from global meteorological stations and satellites sent to their mobile phones, herders can plan ahead, better manage their livestock and save hours of scouting for green pastures.

SOURCE UN News Centre