"We can tell you that the global average temperature is going to increase by 3C or 4C if we carry on as we are - but the critical question is what is that going to mean for London? What is it going to mean for Scotland? What is it going to mean for my back garden?"
The Met office is building a new supercomputer to make forecasting more accurate and reliable.
'The facility will work 13 times faster than the current system, enabling detailed, UK-wide forecast models with a resolution of 1.5km to be run every single hour, rather than every three.'
ReplyDeleteHow will we run it? It will use huge amounts of energy which requires more fossil fuels (at the moment) which just adds to the problem.
DeleteIt says it can have "more accuracy to our forecasts on all time scales for tomorrow, for the next day, next week, next month and even the next century" This is very ambitious and misleading to people supporting it because it's false advertising that it can foresee the climate/weather in a 100 years, they don't know this they haven't created it yet. It doesn't take into account human impacts on the climate as the population grows and more land is taken.
ReplyDeleteIt states that the "computing power to run detailed models over much longer time scales." This is using huge amounts of fossil fuel, causing increased temperatures making the climatic hazards worse - even though it can predict them more accurately and earlier, but never the less building it is still making the environment worse and exacerbating the situation that they are looking at in the first place.
Although there are major benefits concerning socio-economics as it, 'could deliver an estimated £2bn' it doesn't list the negatives.This means it's not a trusted source and therefore people shouldn't trust it and do way more research before supporting it and creating it. Weather effects crops, there are other sustainable ways of reducing the climate impact to this by using GM instead of building a £97m building. Climatic hazards in America they should live away from them or build better houses. There are much better and cheaper solutions. By using Boserup theory we can produce much better way of living and dealing with the changing climate rather than wasting time, effort and money on predicting the changes, at the end of the day it isn't going to stop it so we should find a way to STOP IT instead of prolonging the issues.
Cynic. The Met Office forecasts are some of the best in the world and are used by many organisations as the basis for their own forecasts. It is good to see that you are considering how reliable an article is.
DeleteLots of questions are raised - not least of which is do you see this as using technology for technologies sake.
This is undeniably a great piece of machinery, however is it really worth the investment? The weather in the UK isn't all that extreme if we're focusing on this computer being used on a national scale. Granted, we have 1-2 fairly bad floods a year but the case studies we did last year prove that our preparation methods are good. Shrewsbury for example used the large metal reinforcement walls (I can't remember the actual name) and used flood plain zoning. Not to mention as the article states we are a nation obsessed with the weather meaning if this computer gets it wrong once everyone is bound to be up in arms. If we're talking about this being used internationally, the article states that this deal 'marks the biggest contract the Cray supercomputing firm has secured outside the US', does this mean that the US already has this machinery? If so can we not leave the international forecasting to them? I understand it would make us more independent and 'would put the UK, appropriately, at the forefront of weather and climate science' but isn't is just a waste of money and resources? If this is the case it seems to me that this is merely a competition of who can predict the weather and climate (over the future) the best and most accurately.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Aimee, the costs really do not seem to out weigh the benefits. Perhaps if we could loan out the machine to recuperate some of the cost then it may be efficient (although this would be ethically wrong). The current predictions are already accurate so this seems to be more of a PR stunt rather than an actual investment. I also feel that even with advanced predictions, it still cannot prevent damaged to flood prone areas as ultimately most "socio-economic" damage comes from houses and businesses being damaged. The money might be better spent implementing hard/soft engineering techniques in the most at risk areas.
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