[counters]

That's part of the story.

The real reason why this is a domain where AI models can thrive is actually because we already have extremely complex, well-developed, physics-based simulations of the atmosphere which can take all of these observations and do useful things with them. So the task we currently ask AI models to do with regards to weather forecasting is actually much, much simpler than what you're proposing - we're simply asking the AI models to emulate what these existing models are capable of doing.

Actually doing useful things with the observations alone is a different story altogether. It's the fact that we've been developing computer simulations of the weather and climate since the 1950's that is the key enabler here.