Hard Cash

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Storm Ciara caused widespread wind and flooding damage

Ever wondered why your village was suddenly flooded by a Storm , the meteorologists had not mentioned?

Or why you failed to warn them about the dense fog envelops your home in The Morning ?

The fact is that the predictions of the "big picture forecast" of future conditions has much better Storm Dennis was discovered six days before you arrived.

But it is always local forecasts - Street to Street , and from hour to hour - still a massive challenge.

And that could change now, so the Met Office to secure The Help of a supercomputer-project costs £1. 2 billion

means a Better prognosis that the processing of more data, more quickly, and it runs through simulations of the atmosphere in more detail.

Already, the Met Office is pulling in More Than 200 billion observations from satellites, weather stations and buoys in The Ocean every single day, and this is set to rise.

And you can Work out whether or not a summer downpour flooded your home or down the Street requires more and more computing Power .

The Met Office , the existing supercomputer

"We are the streets before anyone else," says Penny Endersby, chief executive of the Met Office .

"Ultimately, it will make a difference for every individual, every Ministry, every industry, as people are the forecasts always look better. "

It is the largest investment in the 170-year history of the organization and the dwarf £97m bill for the current supercomputer.

In the new project, which will cover billion-plus the cost to not only the hardware itself, but all the running costs over a period of ten years.

It is a first Phase of the installation should be used six times more powerful than the supercomputer.

And Then , five years later, it'll be a major upgrade to increase the performance by a further Three Times .

What will do the supercomputer, anyway?

It will be executed, what the Met Office calls its "digital twin" of the earth-atmosphere, a highly detailed "model" for everything from the winds, the temperatures, the pressures.

The new supercomputer will be six times more powerful than the current

you create this simulated image of our weather, the world is divided into squares.

These have become smaller as technology has Advanced and the smaller, the better, because that means more accuracy.

At the moment, the model of the earth is divided installments in a grid of squares, the 10km.

the UK gets more detailed treatment: the squares of 1,500 m are.

London is studying, with The Help of even smaller squares - 300 m wide, especially for the improvement of the accuracy of the forecasts for the airspace over the large airports.

And of ambition, when the new supercomputer is in operation, for operation with a greater resolution, up to a scale of 100m.

it Will really make a difference?

believes The Met Office for sure. There is a great demand for a better prediction by the military to Power , the company to the organizers of large outdoor events.

It could be. Environment Agency teams, the deployment of mobile flood barriers, or help The National Grid balancing fluctuations in wind and solar Energy

Original supercomputer, installed at the Met Office in Dunstable in 1959,

, And the prospect of rising global temperatures, the development of new and more dangerous Extreme weather can be the accuracy is all the more important.

It was a huge improvement in The Last few years - each The Past decade have reached the forecasts, a whole day ahead in The Future .

A five-day forecast is now as accurate as a one day forecast 40 Years ago.

So the new computing Power will advance that? To make Penny Endersby better promises.

"I don't want my hat to hang, always on a different day in the next ten years," she says. "But it makes our predictions more accurate, more timely and more localized. "

And the government has calculated what that could mean in Hard Cash : for every pound invested, it should be 19 pounds in economic benefit.

And it will help with Climate Change ?

this is The target, with the Digital simulated atmosphere, far in The Future , you need to explore the effects of a hotter world.

the impact of The Rise of 1C in The Past 150 years are not yet fully understood, let alone the greater increases to come.

It should mean that researchers will be able to add more Details to your projections, weave in factors such as the type and nitrogen with the carbon in the air.

And as the UK moves towards its goal of net zero emissions by 2050, there is a chance to explore different options for how the country uses.

For example, what are the consequences of the planting of new forests or the protection of the Moors or the cultivation of biofuels?

will not add the new supercomputer itself to carbon emissions?

As with any major IT installation, it need to be certainly a massive Power supply.

This is the reason why the Met Office is inviting the potential providers to come up with low-carbon options.

And that led to a radical idea. The Last 14 Met Office computers were all housed in the UK - and the new might not have.

About half of the processing - the research deals with Climate Change could be blessed in countries with easy sources of clean Energy .

Iceland , with its geothermal springs, and Norway with its hydroelectric Power are both possibilities.

The offer is valid only for the countries of the European economic Area - the arrangement of the plant on a different continent has been excluded because of the time lag in the use of a remote connection.

invitations for the IT industry to the application for The Project will be developed in the vicinity of the end of the year.

And the start date for the new machine will eventually be the end of 2022.

met office

Source of news: bbc.com