"When severe storms hit, many people reach for their phones and cameras to capture images and videos of what's happening around them. And in Canada, storm chasers and organizations like Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) rely partly on the public when tracking severe weather activity. But in recent years, people have begun fabricating weather stories using photo editing software to modify images, creating photos and videos using AI (artificial intelligence) and even lying about the date and time a photo was taken."
""We have awesome satellites and radars, but they can only tell us so much," Crawford Luke, a meteorologist with ECCC, told CBC. Luke said they especially rely on reports and photos from the public for thunderstorms and heavy snow storms. "We might issue a warning saying we've had this report of hail this size or trees down," Luke said. "And then if we find out later that wasn't true, well, now we've issued that warning like a false alarm.""
"He explained that some images aimed at deceiving ECCC don't even have a touch of editing. Luke used an example of a tornado image that was submitted in Ontario. "It was a real photo of a real tornado, but it was just from a different place," Luke said. "It was sort of sent in as [if this] just happened in southwestern Ontario." Before confirming the tornado had happened, the organization tracked the image back to a newspaper based in Texas."
Environment and Climate Change Canada and storm chasers rely partly on public photos and reports to track thunderstorms and heavy snow. Satellites and radars provide useful data but have limits. People have fabricated weather stories by editing images, using AI-generated photos and videos, or falsifying dates and times. False or misattributed images can prompt weather warnings that later prove incorrect, undermining warning credibility. A real tornado photo from Texas was falsely submitted as if it occurred in southwestern Ontario and was traced back to a Texas newspaper. Increased false reports are affecting credibility and complicating real-time severe-weather tracking.
Read at www.cbc.ca
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