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22nd May, 2009, 07:09 PM
Met office unveils UK's most powerful supercomputer (but admits it may still get weather forecasts WRONG)

The Met Office unveiled Britain's most powerful super computer today, which is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second

However, they admitted despite the ?30million system being more powerful than 100,000 PCs it could still get the forecast WRONG.

The IBM computer, which is housed in special halls bigger than two football pitches, requires 1.2 megawatts of energy to run - enough to power a small town. It will provide meteorological information to a team of 400 scientists.
Enlarge super computer

The Met Office's super computer takes up an area equivalent to two football pitches

It was switched on this week but will take a staggering two MONTHS to fully boot-up. At peak performance it will perform 1,000 billion calculations per second, but this will not be reached until 2011.

The Met Office says the machine will improve day-to-day forecasting but will still not guarantee accuracy.

But it will help save millions of lives by predicting long-term patterns in global warming and forecasting extreme weather events such as typhoons and hurricanes.

Steve Foreman, chief technology officer at the Met Office, said: 'This computer will allow us to make the most accurate weather forecasts we have ever produced.

'People should be able to see a noticeable improvement in the accuracy of forecasting.

'Not only will it help us tell you what the weather will be like today and tomorrow, it will help create a much better long term picture.

'Obviously we can never predict the weather 100 per cent accurately, but this will help considerably.'
Weathermen

The computer - with a whopping 15 million megabytes of memory - went online at the Met Office HQ in Exeter, Devon, this week but will not begin forecasting until August.

It will process information from satellite images and predict disastrous weather events that were previously unforeseeable, such as the infamous hurricane of 1987.

Mr Foreman said: 'We can take the same basic data we had before but make much more detailed calculations with that information.

'The more power you have the better predictions you can make. Now, vast numbers of calculations can be made at one time to produce our most accurate forecasts ever.

'For a long time we have been working at the limits that our computers allow us to. We are confident that we can now be much more accurate and save many lives.

'Of course, we cannot avoid bad weather, but we will now be able to prepare people for weather events when before it wasn't possible.'

He added the machine would be valuable in predicting how climate change will affect Earth.

'We will be ready to answer the questions over what the climate is going to be like and how we can react to it,' he said.

'The world is ready to make these decisions and the super computer equips us with the information to make them.'
Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire

Meteorologists hope the super-computer will help predict hazardous weather events such as the flooding in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire in July 2007

The Met Office computer - which has no name - has overtaken the previous most powerful computer in Britain at Edinburgh University.

Academic hub 'Hector' - (High End Computing Terascale Resources) - is capable of just 67 teraflops - 67 billion calculations a second.

The second most powerful computer in England is at Reading University with a performance level of 27 teraflops - around 27 billion calculations per second.

John Hirst, Met Office chief executive, said the system will provide earlier warning of low probability, high-impact weather, and vital research on climate change.

He said: '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 super computer is an important step in delivering our strategic targets.'

The world's most powerful computer, Sequoia, will be able to achieve speeds of up to 20 Petaflops - the equivalent of more than two million PCs.

It is housed at the US Department of Energy's National Laboratory in California, and when fully running will be used by the US government to help manage its nuclear arsenal.