The UK's top supercomputer, the Edinburgh-based HECToR (high-end computing terescale resource), will be putting its 60 teraflops/second to work studying climate change models for the University of Reading.
The first phase of the system, which went live last October, is some six times more powerful than previous UK supercomputers - ranking it 17th in the world, according to the Top500 listing. The second phase of HECToR will boost processing power to 25 times the strength by 2009, with a third phase expected in 2011.
Scientists from the Walker Institute at Reading will be using the system to run detailed global climate models, which were developed in Japan over the past three years. This is the first time those models have been able to be run in the UK.
Len Shaffrey, a senior scientist developing the new high resolution models, said: "Current climate models struggle to give us details of how climate might change at regional and local levels and in particular how high impact weather, like storms, will change."
He added: "We'll be using the power of HECToR to run much finer resolution global climate models than has been possible before in the UK. Early results are showing that our high resolution global models can simulate regional and local climate more realistically."
Shaffrey said the models allow for more detailed, higher resolution models of weather such as storms, heat waves, and hurricanes, as well as complex weather patterns such as El Nio. Indeed, the system will also be used to investigate tropical weather systems as part of another Reading-based project.
HECToR is part funded by the UK government, as is based at the University of Edinburgh's Advanced Computing Facility.
