Thursday 19 March 2009

MEDIA RELEASE

Weather and climate get a supercomputing boost

Two new supercomputers ordered today by the Bureau of Meteorology and The Australian National University (ANU) will deliver 12 times the power of previous models, ensuring Australia is at the forefront of international weather forecasting and climate modelling.

The Bureau and ANU have selected Sun Microsystems to deliver two state-of-the-art supercomputers capable of processing the vast amount of data needed to meet the needs of the community in forecasting extreme weather events and climate.

The new supercomputers will provide an interoperable computing environment capable of delivering the processing capability needed to model complex weather and climate dynamics. They will be located in Canberra and Melbourne.

Acting Director of the Bureau of Meteorology, Dr Neville Smith said the time is right for a new supercomputer capable of further improving weather prediction as well as providing Australian climate researchers with the processing power needed to undertake more demanding climate forecasts.

“Together the new supercomputers will provide the computer power needed to develop the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator – a new project to tie together weather forecasting as well as climate and ocean forecasts.”

ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Chubb said that building capacity for the future research needs of the nation is critically important and that he was pleased the climate and earth systems sciences research community would be better able to rise to national challenges with the new supercomputers. He also remarked that working with the Bureau, CSIRO and others to this end had been very constructive.

“For more than two decades ANU has supported computationally intensive research across national research communities. The new acquisition will ensure that Australia becomes internationally competitive again in this important area, lifting capability by a factor of 10. In addition to climate modelling and weather prediction, the renewed capability will serve a wide range of other cutting edge research for the nation.”

Funding for the ANU-led National Collaborative Infrastructure Project (NCI), comes primarily from ANU, CSIRO and the Commonwealth Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). The new supercomputers are expected to be operational in 2009.

Ends