New Swiss Weather Computer

[mike Meehan]

Came across this for information - no doubt the Met Office will get some benefit hopefully.

 

A new supercomputer deployed by the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) will allow the country’s national weather service to provide more-detailed and accurate weather forecasts.

The Cray CS-Storm cluster now used by the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) features Intel Xeon processors and offers a peak performance of up to 15 teraflops per node, according to a recent Cray
press release. The new supercomputer is 40 times more powerful than MeteoSwiss’ existing high-performance computing system and allows the weather service to build weather models much faster and with higher resolution, a MeteoSwiss
press release said.

The supercomputer will run advanced simulations that will be based on grid spacing of 1.1 kilometers, which is more precise than the 2.2-kilometer grid from the current supercomputer, the releases said.

“This grid spacing makes it possible to predict with more detail the precipitation distribution, the risk of storms or valley wind systems in the Swiss mountains,†said MeteoSwiss Director General Peter Binder in a statement.

Cray CS-Storm can also produce a larger number of daily forecasts—up to eight per day. The system will fully replace the existing HPC system during the spring or summer of 2016. In the meantime, the Swiss national weather service will use both systems simultaneously to forecast the weather, the releases said.

Edited October 26, 2015 by mike Meehan