A new super-computer is set to improve Niwa’s ability to forecast extreme weather events in New Zealand.
The $12.7 million IBM computer has about 100 times the power of Niwa’s current computer and can supply much more information on future severe weather events such as flooding, as well as greater world issues like climate change.
The computer can perform 34 trillion calculations a second and is being hailed as the holy grail of forecasting by Niwa scientist Michael Uddstrom.
Uddstrom told TVNZ’s Breakfast programme that computers on their own are dumb beasts and it’s the software and the science put into them that makes them really interesting.
He says the new computer will enable Niwa to to make advances in the world of simulation and should provide more accurate immediate and long-term forecasts.
In examining the present, scientists can project into the future and determine what the atmosphere, weather and climate will look like says Uddstrom.
“By having a much larger computational machine to explore that space we can come up with more confident estimates of what can happen.”
He says they must be careful in translating the weather into hazards and for it to be really useful for New Zealand and the economy they must not cry wolf.
“It’s the false alarms that cause people to lose interest or faith.”
source: tvnz.co.nz
