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UAE: New supercomputer to boost weather forecasting

Abu Dhabi - New system will help increase accuracy and predict weather events faster.

A new supercomputer has been rolled out to advance weather forecasting and overall climate research in the UAE, officials said.

The National Center of Meteorology (NCM) on Monday announced the launch of the new built supercomputer named ‘Atmosphere’, which was built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) using the Cray EX system, an end-to-end high-performance computing (HPC) liquid-cooled platform.

The NCM’s new supercomputer has been customised to deliver advanced performance spanning compute, accelerated compute, software, storage and networking.

The combined technologies help NCM’s researchers improve modelling, simulation, Artificial Intelligence and deep learning capabilities to process complex data, increase accuracy, and predict weather events faster.

Dr Abdulla Al Mandous, director general of NCM and president of the Regional Association II (Asia) of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), said: “At the National Center of Meteorology (NCM), we are dedicated to providing the UAE with operational weather forecasting to provide real-time forecasts and alerts that inform local entities and citizens, and most importantly, help ensure safety. We are also committed to gaining a deeper understanding of the climate and its complex patterns, and to developing innovative technologies that can increase sustainability.”

He added: “With Atmosphere, we collaborated with HPE to design a significantly more performant supercomputer with targeted capabilities in modelling, simulation and artificial intelligence, to accelerate weather and climate insights and advance our nation’s overall R&D.

“By hosting this state-of-the-art supercomputer, the UAE is now the first country to operate the most powerful liquid-cooled system, based on the HPE Cray EX, for national weather centres across the Middle East and Africa.”

Bill Mannel, vice president and general manager, High Performance Computing, at HPE said: “HPE-powered supercomputers support the majority of the world’s weather forecasting needs, whether it be to improve predictability of a hurricane’s landfall or to anticipate the spread and impact of wildfires. World-leading organizations such as the National Centre of Meteorology apply the power of supercomputing to gain insights on weather and climate that are critical to decision-making and ensuring local and national safety.”

He added: “We are honoured to have been selected by NCM to build its Atmosphere supercomputer, customised with powerful, end-to-end high-performance computing (HPC) solutions, to further its mission in making breakthroughs in weather and climate intelligence and provide real-time analysis for the UAE.”

“We are proud to collaborate with the National Center for Meteorology (NCM) to build its Atmosphere supercomputer,” said Ahmad Alkhallafi, managing director at HPE UAE. “Equipping our partners and customers with capabilities to accelerate their digital transformation journey and unlock value, is core to our mission at HPE. With our latest development with NCM, HPE furthers its commitment to the UAE and its people by delivering an innovative yet sustainable system that supports NCM with weather forecasting faster than ever.”

To support ongoing weather forecasting needs for the UAE, NCM uses a numerical weather prediction modelling software, such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model and Consortium for Small-scale Modeling (COSMO), which leverage physics and dynamics-based models of the atmosphere and oceans to simulate and predict weather conditions.

With the new Atmosphere supercomputer, which will deliver faster performance than NCM’s existing system, the runtime of simulations running on these models will decrease by up to 200 per cent on WRF and up to 300 percent on COSMO, significantly speeding time-to-insight on weather predictions.