The Met Office has just launched a brand new supercomputer worth £1.2 billion that is set to provide more accurate and detailed forecasts, and is operated by Microsoft. Capable of performing 60 quadrillion calculations per second, the cloud-based system is expected to significantly improve the accuracy and range of forecasts, while also enhancing the UK’s ability to predict extreme weather events earlier. The Met Office have said that this next-generation supercomputer that’s hosted on Microsoft’s Azure platform, is the first in the world dedicated solely to weather and climate science to operate entirely in the cloud .
The Met Office Science Director, Prof Simon Vosper, said: “There’s never been a more critical time for weather and climate intelligence. We know the climate’s changing, as we know the risks of hazardous weather. The supercomputer will unlock our ability to deliver those improved services where they’re needed.”
According to the Met Office, the new system will make highly detailed 14-day forecasts the norm and provide more reliable rainfall predictions.
The increased computational power which will now be more than four times that of its predecessor, allows researchers to run higher-resolution simulations and more complex weather models with greater speed and accuracy.
The Met Office’s Chief Information Officer, Charles Ewen, said: “People ask how a bigger computer improves the weather forecast.
“One big thing this new computer will allow us to do in the near future is to be able to produce 14-day forecasts with a similar kind of accuracy than we can today for seven, eight, nine days.”
This also represents a major strategic pivot for the Met Office, which, for the first time in its 170-year history, is not managing its own supercomputing infrastructure in-house.
First announced in 2020 with a £1.2 billion investment from the UK government, the project was initially scheduled to go live in 2022.
The rollout was delayed due to COVID-19-related disruptions and global supply chain issues, particularly in silicon manufacturing.
Despite this, the Met Office conducted a months-long parallel run with the previous system to ensure a smooth and uninterrupted handover.
