A greener forecast for the Met Office

What's the weather like where you are? What's the forecast for tomorrow? If you've asked that question in the UK, the chances are the answer will have been provided by the UK Met Office. This public sector organisation has responsibility for providing the UK with detailed, accurate and timely weather information from across the globe. As concern over the environment increases, the Met Office is increasingly tasked with providing predictions on climate change over future decades. But how can these predictions - which are complex, challenging and require significant computing power - be provided more efficiently and accurately, and how can computing power be harnessed more efficiently so as to reduce the effects on the environment?

IBM is a world leader in the research and development of high performance computers and has a long history of working with clients to provide innovative technical solutions to the challenges they face. In August 2008, IBM and the Met Office announced a contract for IBM to provide the Met Office with its next generation supercomputer that will underpin its weather forecast and climate research programmes up to 2013. As of June 2008, the initial system is the second most powerful supercomputer in the UK and within the top 20 worldwide.

The extra computing power means the Met Office can achieve even more accurate and detailed short range weather forecasts; provide earlier warning of low probability, high impact weather such as local flash floods and will also be used to progress research on climate change for example monitoring sea-level rises and potential threats from storm surges. Importantly, the Met Office - and the UK Government - can also be assured that IBM's leading-edge technology requires significantly less power - around 40%, effectively providing the Met Office with more computing power for less energy consumption - and cost.

Read more information here (PDF 74,1KB)

Get Adobe® Reader®