The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has introduced a new suite of weather forecasting models that are driven by Artificial Intelligence and are expected to deliver faster and more accurate predictions, the agency announced on Wednesday.

"NOAA's strategic application of AI is a significant leap forward in American weather model innovation," said Neil Jacobs, NOAA's administrator, in a statement. "These AI models reflect a new paradigm for NOAA in providing improved accuracy for large-scale weather and tropical tracks, and faster delivery of forecast products to meteorologists and the public at a lower cost through drastically reduced computational expenses."

Currently, scientists at NOAA and its National Weather Service mainly rely on the Global Forecast System, or GFS, a weather model that constantly generates data for different weather scenarios, including temperature, wind, rainfall, ozone concentration and soil moisture, and separates them out into individual models dedicated to conditions on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere. The Global Ensemble Forecast System, or GEFS, is another model that was created to address certain limitations or biases in the original system. 

NOAA is using those traditional forecasting models as frameworks for its new AI forecasting systems. The agency has estimated that the AI programs will require between 91% and 99% less computing resources than traditional models, while at the same time extending the life of a particular forecast, potentially by as much as 18 or 24 hours. 

Its new suite of AI technology will be applied in three specific areas, said NOAA. 

The first, called the Artificial Intelligence Global Forecast System, or AIGFS, is described as a "weather forecast model that implements AI to deliver improved weather forecasts more quickly and efficiently" than its traditional counterpart, according to the agency. 

"A single 16-day forecast uses only 0.3% of the computing resources of the operational GFS and finishes in approximately 40 minutes," said NOAA. "This reduced latency means forecasters get critical data more quickly than they do from the traditional GFS."

The second, called the Artificial Intelligence Global Ensemble Forecast System, or AIGEFS, is a somewhat more advanced version of that system and is designed to provide weather forecasters with a range of forecast possibilities instead of just one. A Hybrid-GEFS is the third, in which the new AI forecasting technology and traditional GEFS work together to develop predictions that account for forecast uncertainty.

Scientists have identified areas in each of the AI models that need improvement. According to NOAA, there is still work underway to refine the systems' hurricane forecasts, as well as the diversity of variable outcomes produced by the AIGEFS.

CBS News has reached out to NOAA and the National Weather Service for more information.