By Andy McCue, 4 August 2008 17:10
NEWS
UK weather forecasting body the Met Office has signed a £33m deal for a new supercomputer that will enable more accurate and detailed forecasts.
The IBM supercomputer will be one of the most powerful in the UK and will be capable of a peak performance approaching one petaflop - equivalent to more than 100,000 PCs.
The extra computing power will give the Met Office the capability to do more accurate and detailed short range weather forecasts through high resolution computer simulations, and it will also allow greater use of multiple simultaneous forecasts that will make it possible to give earlier warning of high impact weather.
John Hirst, Met Office CEO, said in a statement: "In a world where the effect of extreme weather events is becoming more severe and the potential impact of global warming is becoming ever more apparent, the Met Office plays an increasingly vital role in researching and forecasting these events. The new supercomputer is an important step in delivering our strategic targets."
Part of the system will also be used for collaborative scientific research supported by both the Natural Environment Research Council and Met Office.
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Andrea Coppini
Does it come with a 'Quick Start Guide' and driver CDs? Or maybe Windows Server 2008 has built in drivers.... or maybe I've reinstalled too many PCs today....
2. Roger England
Given that the Met Office is about 70% accurate in forecasting the weather, and that a prediction of tommorrow's weather being the same as today's will be 70% accurate, they may as well get some seaweed and save us all a lot of money!
3. Roger Huffadine
I've given up using met office forecasts and gone back to looking at the Atlantic pressure charts. That way I can get a much more accurate view of what is happening. I suspect that the reason we don't get pressure maps on TV weather forecasts anymore is because they would show that the presenter is talking nonsense.
4. misceng
Quite a few years ago the Met Office got a supercomputer which they claimed would enable them to give accurate 5 day forecasts. Take any week and view Countryfile's forecast then compare it with the forecasts broadcast which daily show what weather to expect in the next day or two. Sometimes there is a vague resemblance but more often the forecast for the day after tomorrow changes throughout the day. Perhaps Roger is right and we should use seaweed.
5. Richard
Strange priorities: "One of the most powerful computers in the UK" used simply to predict whether we should carry a brolly tomorrow?
And, made more pointless by the brief, inaccurate, gabbled "forecasts" actually broadcast by the BBC - which often lump together everything between Lands End and Swindon as the "South West."
6. anonymous
Maybe they just need a budget desktop supercomputer as knocked up by the University Of Antwerp for Medical Imaging purposes, which runs ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards that run the stream processors in a massively multiprocessor manner.
From $1,500.