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Met Office’s new £1bn supercomputer ‘will help us guard against climate change effects’

Predicting storms and modelling climate change about to get faster and more precise, say forecasters

Monday 17 February 2020 16:58 GMT

Flooding in Lower Bullingham, Hereford, in the aftermath of Storm Dennis. The Met Office's new supercomputer is intended to help beef up the UK's flood defences (PA)

The Met Office is to receive £1.2bn to develop a new weather and climate supercomputer.

Due to become operational in summer 2022, the new machine is intended to provide six times the performance of the current setup.

The massive increase in processing power will let meteorologists predict weather changes on a much smaller scale, allowing towns and cities to prepare better for disruptive weather, the Met Office said.

Supercomputers can run trillions of calculations in parallel to crunch the huge amount of data necessary to track and predict weather. Recent notable gains in forecasting credited to supercomputers include the identification of storms Ciara and Dennis, plus the “Beast from the East”, several days before they hit Britain.

Forecasters said the new machine would “predict storms, select the most suitable locations for flood defences and predict changes to the global climate” more accurately than the incumbent, a trio of Cray XC40 systems installed in 2016 and for which support is due to end in September 2022.

It will also be used to beef up the UK’s capacity in artificial intelligence and other high-tech research, a Met Office statement said.

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

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1/20Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

California

In this decade, humans have become ever more aware of climate change. Calls for leaders to act echo around the globe as the signs of a changing climate become ever more difficult to ignore

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Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Athens, Greece

Fierce wildfires have flared up in numerous countries. The damage being caused is unprecedented: 103 people were killed in wildfires last year in California, one of the places best prepared, best equipped to fight such blazes in the world

AFP/Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Redding, California

Entire towns have been razed. The towns of Redding and Paradise in California were all but eliminated in the 2018 season

AP

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Athens, Greece

While wildfires in Greece (pictured), Australia, Indonesia and many other countries have wrought chaos to infrastructure, economies and cost lives

AFP/Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Carlisle, England

In Britain, flooding has become commonplace. Extreme downpours in Carlisle in the winter of 2015 saw the previous record flood level being eclipsed by two feet

AFP/Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Hebden Bridge, England

Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire has flooded repeatedly in the past decade, with the worst coming on Christmas Day 2015. Toby Smith of Climate Visuals, an organisation focused on improving how climate change is depicted in the media, says: "Extreme weather and flooding, has and will become more frequent due to climate change. An increase in the severity and distribution of press images, reports and media coverage across the nation has localised the issue. It has raised our emotions, perception and personalised the effects and hazards of climate change."

Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Somerset, England

Out west in Somerset, floods in 2013 led to entire villages being cut off and isolated for weeks

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Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Dumfries, Scotland

"In summer 2012, intense rain flooded over 8000 properties. In 2013, storms and coastal surges combined catastrophically with elevated sea levels whilst December 2015, was the wettest month ever recorded. Major flooding events continued through the decade with the UK government declaring flooding as one of the nation's major threats in 2017," says Mr Smith of Climate Visuals

Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

London, England

Weather has been more extreme in Britain in recent years. The 'Beast from the East' which arrived in February 2018 brought extraordinarily cold temperatures and high snowfall. Central London (pictured), where the city bustle tends to mean that snow doesn't even settle, was covered in inches of snow for day

PA

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

London, England

Months after the cold snap, a heatwave struck Britain, rendering the normally plush green of England's parks in Summer a parched brown for weeks

AFP/Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

New South Wales, Australia

Worsening droughts in many countries have been disastrous for crop yields and have threatened livestock. In Australia, where a brutal drought persisted for months last year, farmers have suffered from mental health problems because of the threat to their livelihood

Reuters

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Tonle Sap, Cambodia

Even dedicated climate skeptic Jeremy Clarkson has come to recognise the threat of climate change after visiting the Tonle Sap lake system in Cambodia. Over a million people rely on the water of Tonle Sap for work and sustinence but, as Mr Clarkson witnessed, a drought has severley depleted the water level

Carlo Frem/Amazon

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

In reaction to these harbingers of climate obliteration, some humans have taken measures to counter the impending disaster. Ethiopia recently planted a reported 350 million trees in a single day

AFP/Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Morocco

Morocco has undertaken the most ambitious solar power scheme in the world, recently completing a solar plant the size of San Francisco

AFP/Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

London, England

Electric cars are taking off as a viable alternative to fossil fuel burning vehicles and major cities across the world are adding charging points to accomodate

AFP/Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Purmerend, The Netherlands

Cities around the world are embracing cycling too, as a clean (and healthy) mode of transport. The Netherlands continues to lead the way with bikes far outnumbering people

Jeroen Much/Andras Schuh

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Xiamen, China

Cycling infrastructure is taking over cities the world over, in the hope of reducing society's dependency on polluting vehicles

Ma Weiwei

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Chennai, India

Despite positive steps being taken, humans continue to have a wildly adverse effect on the climate. There have been numerous major oil spills this decade, the most notable being the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010

AFP/Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

Amazon rainforest, Brazil

More recently, large swathes of the Amazon rainforest were set alight by people to clear land for agriculture

AFP/Getty

Climate change: Decade's defining issue in pictures

California

This decade may have seen horrors but it has led to an understanding that the next decade must see change if human life is to continue

Getty

Professor Ted Shepherd, chair of the Science Review Group, said: “Improved daily to seasonal forecasts and longer-term climate projections will equip society with a greater ability to proactively protect itself against the adverse impacts of climate change.”

The new machine will also “help support the transition to a low carbon economy”, Met Office chief executive Prof Penny Endersby added. The government has pledged to make the UK carbon neutral by 2050.

Prof Endersby claimed in an interview with the BBC that the Met Office’s new computing power would put Britain’s forecasters “streets ahead of anybody else”.

Questioned about the possible power requirements of its new monster computer, the Met Office told The Independent it recognised the impact a machine of this scale – likely featuring hundreds of thousands of processing cores, plus storage, cooling and more – could have on the environment.

A spokesperson said: “The energy consumption will be entirely dependent upon the chosen solution. The Met Office has a long-standing commitment to environmental responsibility and recognises the impact of supercomputing on the environment.

“The Met Office will work with potential data centre suppliers to ensure they are able to meet our high expectations regarding energy efficiency and ensure whole life sustainability is considered.”

Hosting part of the system abroad “may enable us to take advantage of renewable energy sources”, they added. However, at least half its processing capacity will reside in the UK and the cost of any long-distance communication will be factored into the procurement.

The precise configuration is yet to be determined, with the Met Office saying it is “architecture-agnostic” regarding whose components will be used.

The BBC reported that after five years, upgrades are planned in order to boost performance still further.

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