World’s most powerful weather supercomputer to be used for UK forecasts
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The Met Office has signed a multimillion-pound agreement with Microsoft for the provision of a world-leading supercomputing capability that will take weather and climate forecasting to the next level.
The new supercomputer is expected to be the world’s most advanced dedicated to weather and climate.
It will be in the top 25 supercomputers on the globe and be twice as powerful as any other in the UK.
The data it generates will be used to provide more accurate warnings of severe weather, helping to build resilience and protect the UK population, businesses and infrastructure from the impacts of increasingly extreme storms, floods and snow.
It will also be used to take forward ground-breaking climate change modelling, unleashing the full potential of the Met Office’s global expertise in climate science.
The precision and accuracy of its modelling will help to inform Government policy as part of the UK’s fight against climate change, and its efforts to reach net zero by 2050.
It follows the announcement by Government in February 2020 which committed £1.2 billion of funding to develop this state-of-the-art supercomputer.
Penny Endersby, Chief Executive at the Met Office, said: “We are delighted to be working in collaboration with Microsoft to deliver our next supercomputing capability.
"Working together we will provide the highest quality weather and climate datasets and ever more accurate forecasts that enable decisions to allow people to stay safe and thrive.
"This will be a unique capability which will keep not just the Met Office, but the UK at the forefront of environmental modelling and high-performance computing."
The new supercomputer is due to be up and running next summer.
It will provide better forecasting of local-scale weather using very high-resolution simulations that can be quickly turned on in an area where severe weather is forecast. This will enhance emergency preparedness to local storms, heavy rain and flooding;
