UK’s Met Office plans upgrade for weather-forecasting supercomputer

BBC : The UK’s Met Office has confirmed that it will build a £97 million ($156 million) supercomputer to replace the one it currently uses for weather and climate modeling. The computing facility’s location will be split between the Met Office’s headquarters and a new facility, both in Exeter. The first computations will take place in September 2015. The Cray XC40 will have a processor speed of 16 petaflops (16 × 10¹⁵ calculations per second), 13 times faster than the current machine, and will have 17 petabytes of storage. That will allow for faster and more accurate weather forecasts as well as better and longer-scale climate models. Because of the UK’s location and geography, weather forecasting is more difficult than in many other places. The Met Office estimates that improved forecasts could provide £2 billion in economic benefits.