The Met Office has bought four supercomputers from IBM to help
it tackle climate change.
The power-hungry supercomputer produces 12,000 tonnes of carbon
dioxide a year - and has made the Met Office one of the worst
public buildings in Britain for pollution in a new green league
table, according to the
Telegraph.
John Hirst, Met Office chief executive, said, "In a world where
the effect of extreme weather events is becoming more severe and
the potential impact of global warming is becoming ever more
apparent, the Met Office plays an increasingly vital role in
researching and forecasting these events. The new supercomputer is
an important step in delivering our strategic targets."
The supercomputer uses 13TBytes of memory and over 500TBytes of
disk storage, making it the second fastest system in the UK, with
the computing power roughly equivalent to 20,000 high-end PCs
Peak performance of 125 trillion floating point operations per
second. By 2011, the total system is anticipated to have a total
peak performance approaching 1 PetaFlop - equivalent to over
100,000 PCs and over 30 times more powerful than what is in place
today. As part of the agreement, IBM will also provide a mid-life
system upgrade, support and maintenance services during the
five-year contract, the Met Office said.