British Supercomputer Can Predict Winter Weather A Year In Advance

[Aragorn]

http://insidehpc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ukmet.jpg


Source: Met Office (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/weather/weather-science-it/supercomputer)



In October 2014 the Government confirmed its investment of £97 million in a new high performance computing facility for the Met Office. Enhanced processing power will help us protect life and property and will also enable us to turn more science into services for the benefit of government, business and the public.

The first phase of this supercomputer went live on 25 August 2015, five weeks ahead of schedule.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_G7NFMDsVY





More detailed forecasts

Turning research into highly detailed operational forecasts and services will enable us to produce innovative forecasts - for example focussing high resolution models on strategically important infrastructure such as airports and flood defences. More detailed forecasts will make it possible to predict small-scale, high impact weather features with greater skill, such as thunderstorms that have the potential to lead to flash flooding.



Probabilistic forecasting

Greater computing power will enable us to run numerous forecasts simultaneously. The spread of the forecasts allows us to determine the levels of confidence across a range of possible outcomes. A probabilistic approach is useful in helping business, government, responders and the public to manage risk.



Collaboration

An element of the new computing facility will be located at Exeter Science Park, which will help create a collaborative environment where we can work with others on science and service delivery. Sharing the supercomputer will enable collaborative research such as:


A UK-wide research project to create a next-generation climate model (known as an Earth System Model) which captures all major aspects of the Earth's climate system (oceans, atmosphere, atmospheric chemistry, terrestrial carbon cycle and ocean biogeochemistry).


Working with NERC (the Natural Environment Research Council) and STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council) we will develop the next generation Met Office model, suitable for running accurately and efficiently on future computing architectures.


Improving UK environmental prediction by using weather forecasting models together with other detailed prediction models, such as for flooding, coastal and river impacts, and atmospheric dispersion (used for volcanic ash, disease spread).




Source: Met Office (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/weather/weather-science-it/supercomputer)

[Amanda]

Just thinking about HAARP as I it is used for weather modification, along with other applications. Perhaps the super computer is connected albeit remotely to HAARP. Just wondering....

Much Respect - Amanda

[Aragorn]

Just thinking about HAARP as I it is used for weather modification, along with other applications. Perhaps the super computer is connected albeit remotely to HAARP. Just wondering....

Not everyone is a conspirator, Amanda, and not every bit of technology being developed is designed for nefarious purposes. ;)

Supercomputers have traditionally always been used in weather forecasting, geological research, economics, astrophysics, molecular biology, et al. The purpose of a supercomputer is to do heavy number crunching in a parallelized fashion — this, as distinct from the role of a mainframe, which is better at transactional processing. Of course, as such they're also being used by the spooks in order to break encryption, but the spooks won't need a supercomputer at the British meteorological institute for that. They've got their own supercomputers.

From the technical point of view, a supercomputer is actually a so-called cluster, i.e. a tightly integrated network of multiple — typically thousands — independent computers which are all under control of a couple of nodes in the network, and which all work together as if they're a single, giant computer system. The control nodes distribute the calculations across the slave nodes by way of a specially designed high-speed network connection so that they can be carried out in parallel. There's also a high degree of redundancy on account of storage, memory, processors and power supplies, and — needless to say — the whole thing also runs 24/7 and is never shut down or rebooted. Everything is hot-pluggable and can be swapped out on the fly if need be, from hard disks up to entire computing nodes, all without having to take the system down.

[sandy]

It must be connected to the Sun's Source for the most part as that is where our planets real weather comes from , in the big picture of climate development, IMHO.

[Aragorn]

It must be connected to the Sun's Source for the most part as that is where our planets real weather comes from , in the big picture of climate development, IMHO.

That's a good point, Sandy. It is possible that solar weather and solar cycles are part of the data input for the calculations, but I don't really know — the article doesn't say that to be the case.

The claim is that this supercomputer can predict winter weather — it doesn't even mention the weather during the other seasons — up to a year in advance, but I guess we'll have to see how accurate it really is, and whether that claim was an idle one or not. A lot will of course depend upon feeding the machine with the correct information. Anything that is left out — whether willingly or unwillingly — is going to have a serious impact on the correctness of the computer's forecasts.