Weather forecasts are about to become a lot more precise around the world, especially in the UK where the Met Office has announced a plan to purchase what would be one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Folks in London will now be able to have a more accurate reading of their 364 days of rain.
This 309,000 lb, £97 million computer will likely be able to run 13 times faster than the existing IBM supercomputer, performing more than 16,000 trillion calculations per second. The extra capacity will be useful for climate scientists, who need immense amounts of computing power to run detailed models over a long period of time.
The supercomputer will have 480 000 central processing units, about 12 times as many as the current Met Office supercomputer. It marks the biggest contract that the Seattle based Cray supercomputing firm has confirmed outside the United States. The purchase would put the UK at the forefront of weather and climate science. The advance in flood warnings, less air travel disruption, and efficient planning for the impacts of climate change are estimated to deliver £2 billion in socio-economic benefits.
To be built in Exeter, England during 2015, the system is to be operational next September and reach full capacity in 2017. It will be able to provide hourly updates and highly detailed weather information for local areas and particularly important areas that require a more accurate assessment. Forecasts of wind speeds, snow, and fog could be delivered to major airports and the public with a spatial resolution of 300 metres compared to the current 1.5 kilometre accuracy.
The weather in the UK is notoriously hard to forecast because of its topography and environmental influences from the surrounding Arctic and the Atlantic Oceans. However weather forecasts are of utmost importance, whether it be for the daily commuter, road maintenance, or runway closures at airports.
The Met Office currently receives 106 million observations per day from around the world using weather balloons, satellites, and commercial airplanes which send data as they fly between destinations. The Met computer then integrates the weather observations with broad-scale factors such as air pressure differences, solar radiation, the rotation of the Earth, and the water cycle into modeling software to predict the weather around the world.
UK weather prediction has had some major slips in forecasting in the past. These including the denial of an approaching hurricane in 1987, which killed 19 people; and the suggestion of a 2009 summer perfect for barbequing which ended up in relentless downpour. The new system is sure to raise expectations for improved forecasting accuracy and the Met Office is confident that they will deliver. This investment in computing power is just another example of how technology benefits mankind, informing and protecting the public from the ever-changing weather.
Leave a Reply