New Met Office supercomputing service can process more than 50 billion weather observations each day

Met Office warning on computer — The supercomputing service will allow the Met Office to process vast amounts of weather and climate data quickly. Image: Shutterstock

The programme is set to deliver £11.3billion in socioeconomic benefits to the UK and will transform the UK’s national weather and climate capabilities

The Met Office has announced that the world’s first fully managed cloud supercomputing service for weather and climate science is now in use, helping the organisation to process huge amounts of weather and climate data at speed.

The new forecasting platform uses around 1.8 million processor cores and performs about 60 quadrillion calculations every second. Each day, the system processes more than 50 billion weather observations, collected to support forecasts, warnings and climate services used across the UK.

The programme is expected to deliver £ 11.3 billion in socioeconomic benefits to the UK, supporting government, businesses and communities, as well as sectors such as aviation, defence and land transport. The new supercomputer service will also benefit severe weather warnings, emergency response, flood forecasting, energy resilience, and climate adaptation.

Next-generation climate modelling will also be able to run at higher resolutions, helping scientists identify near-term weather and climate hazards.

‘This is a major achievement for the Met Office and the UK. Our new supercomputing capability underpins the forecasts, warnings and climate information that help people, businesses and public services make better decisions,’ said Met Office chief data and information officer Charles Ewen.

‘Its scale allows us to process tens of billions of weather observations every day, conduct increasingly sophisticated scientific modelling and provide reliable services around the clock. This major operational milestone provides a strong foundation for further improvements to weather forecasting, climate science and the services that help the UK stay safe and thrive.’

Heatwave in London. Adults and children play with water to cool at a dancing fountain at Grany Square, summer of 2019 is hottest ever measured with record high temperature. London, UK - August 1, 2019 — The supercomputing service will help ensure accurate severe weather warnings, like those issued during the heatwave earlier this year. Image: Nicolas Economou/Shutterstock

The Met Office generates forecasts by running computerised numerical weather models that analyse billions of observations. This helps meteorologists predict how current conditions could develop in the future. The organisation relies on ensemble modelling, a forecasting method in which many simulations run from slightly different starting conditions to keep forecasts accurate.

According to the Met Office, its four-day forecast is now as accurate as a one-day forecast was 30 years ago.