Met office supercomputer: What it means
- Published
Britain loves nothing more than talking about the weather, so the Met Office's latest project might be the most British thing ever.
They're building a £97m supercomputer to provide more accurate, frequent weather forecasts.
It will also help with climate modelling, which is when weather scientists, or meteorologists, use a computer model of how the atmosphere, oceans, land and ice all interact.
It can help them forecast the future of our climate.
As well as weather-related chit-chat, this new supercomputer could also trigger:
Parties at the newspapers...
No one could accuse the media of not knowing that British people love a weather story.
The Daily Express has had 102 weather stories on their front page so far this year.
A weather warning, prior to Hurricane Gonzalo
They aren't alone in identifying that there's an appetite for a good-old-British-weather-story.
Despite the fact winter comes round every year, the annual changing of the seasons continues to make headlines in all the major newspapers and across the BBC.
This new supercomputer promises a wealth of new potential weather stories. There's a darker side to this though...
Weather headlines just got serious
British weather has previously been very difficult to forecast.
We're an island nation between the Atlantic Ocean and mainland Europe so if the wind directions changes even a little bit, we really feel it.
We're also the meeting place for warm tropical air and cold arctic air, so there are lots of complex weather systems.
The new supercomputer will be a lot more accurate. There will be a lot more data available to the media which could mean that if headlines continue with catastrophic predictions, this could be far more serious.
Met Office chief executive Rob Varley said it will be able to "add more precision, more detail, more accuracy to our forecasts on all time scales for tomorrow, for the next day, next week, next month and even the next century".
Even if Michael Fish predicts a hurricane now, there will probably be one.
We will become world leaders in weather
The Cray XC40 machine will be one of the most advanced supercomputers in the world, when it is completed (in 2017).
To give some scale:
It is more powerful than 100,000 Playstations.
It can perform 16 quadrillion calculations every second.
At 140 tonnes, it weighs the same 11 double decker buses.
It will have 120,000 times more memory than your smartphone.
This supercomputer's predictions could change our lives
Weather forecasts are really, really important.
Floods destroy people's homes. Airports rely on predictions to help them fly safely.
Hospitals need predictions from the Met Office to anticipate how much bed space they may need, because extreme weather can affect people's health.
Accurate forecasts can also help businesses anticipate demand. It means that if bad weather's on the way, gas and electricity companies can be prepared.
More weather to talk about
This picture often circulates on social media during a 'weather event'
Whether it's on the bus, the train, or on social media, we love talking about the weather.
However as British people love sarcasm almost as much, we can't promise you won't be seeing a whole lot more of that too.
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