Super weather system to up forecast accuracy

Weather predictions will be more accurate

The Met Office is to upgrade its weather predictions with a £33m supercomputer from IBM that will be the second most powerful system in the UK.

The extra power will help the Met Office make more accurate predictions and forecast further ahead.

When finished in 2011, the computer will be 30 times more powerful than the current system ­ equivalent to some 100,000 PCs or one petaflop.

“The new system will provide a step change in what we can predict,” said Alan Dickinson, director of science and technology at the Met Office.

The Met Office runs three weather models simultaneously: A global model, which has a small amount of detail but provides a longer range of forecasting; a North Atlantic and European model, which runs median time and accuracy models; and a UK model, which has the highest local detail. It is in the area of UK forecasting that the improvements will be felt most, as the Met Office will be able to model on a 1.5km resolution, up from the current 4km.

“This more detailed modelling will help us predict with more accuracy particular types of events that could affect the public, such as thunderstorms and flash floods,” said Dickinson.

The greater computing power can also allow the Met Office to do an “ensemble forecast”. This means running tens, sometimes hundreds of forecast models at the same time to give an “uncertainty distribution” and helps produce more accurate reports.

The Met’s computers will take information from a number of different sources, including satellites, thousands of weather balloons around the world and from packages of instruments attached to airliners.

This information is all captured and processed in a matter of hours through international communication networks.

The Met Office is part of the Ministry of Defence, and also provides information to
the UK armed forces for its global operations.

Defence minister Derek Twigg said: “The replacement of the Met Office’s supercomputer will enable it to take advantage of latest technology and thereby deliver enhanced services to the public and both government and commercial customers.”