Based in the city, the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) will soon get a 10-petaflop supercomputer, which will strengthen the institute’s research and modeling capabilities. Currently, the institute has 4 Petaflop Pratyush supercomputers.
“The new computer will help scientists run climate models being developed under Mission Monsoon Phase 3,” said Kiren Rijiju, Union Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).
Rijiju was speaking at IITM on Saturday during his first visit to the institute after becoming Union Minister for MOES.
Ministry of Earth Sciences Secretary M Ravichandran and IITM Director R Krishnan participated in the function.
During the visit, the minister saw the working of Pratyush supercomputer, cloud stimulation, lightning phenomenon and other studies being done at the institute.
MoES has placed a purchase order for supercomputers. It will have a combined capacity of 18 petaflops.
“Currently, the country’s supercomputers Pratyush and Mihir, with a combined capacity of 6.8 petaflops, are housed at Indian IITM, Pune and National Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), Noida, respectively. They were made operational in 2018. New supercomputers will also be installed in these institutes,” he said.
“Weather behavior is changing very fast and weather conditions are very unstable these days. Our science needs to catch up with the changing patterns, and a more powerful supercomputer will help us go deeper into our forecasting capabilities and into the study of various aspects of weather and climate,” said Ravichandran.
“Our current high-performance computers allow us to map weather and climate changes to a resolution of 12*12 km. With the new system we can increase the resolution to 6*6 km. Ravichandran said these supercomputers will be used to calculate data related to weather forecasting and run different weather and climate models.
During the ceremony, two Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) were signed by IITM, Pune and Tezpur University and Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) in Nainital.
The partnership aims to pool expertise, resources and research capabilities to address environmental challenges and develop effective solutions.
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