What deep learning algorithms can teach us about snow

(Image: Pixabay CC0) - Canadians think they know a lot about snow. It is practically a national pastime to discuss winter weather. But a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo is taking the Canadian obsession with weather to a whole new level. Fraser King is studying the ways machine learning can be applied to predicting patterns of precipitation, and especially annual snowfall and snowmelt in the context of climate change. In his latest study , which he undertook with a team of researchers including his PhD supervisor Professor Christopher Fletcher, he puts forward his new weather modelling program under the name DeepPrecip. "In this new research we've been working to develop a model, which is a deep learning computational network," King says. "It's difficult to accurately measure snow.