New Icelandic Met Office weather and climate supercomputer, becomes operational
In unique collaboration with three other National Meteorological Services
The National Meteorological Institutes of Iceland, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands have joined forces to respond to climate change with more timely weather forecasting on a new, now operational, common supercomputer. This helps prepare each nation for the impacts of weather patterns, which are expected to become more extreme and more challenging to forecast.
The ‘United Weather Centres West' collaboration (UWC-West) between the National Meteorological Services of Iceland, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands has entered its operational phase and is now running a common weather forecasting model on a new supercomputer, located here in Iceland, supporting to the provision of state-of-the-art services to society in a changing climate.
Building on five years of close collaboration between the four National Meteorological Services and improved common computational capabilities, this supercomputer calculates forecasts at a higher level of detail for a much larger area than before. Powered entirely by renewable Icelandic hydropower and geothermal energy sources, the running costs and CO2 footprint will be kept to a minimum, as part of the institutes' contributions towards net-zero.
Hildigunnur H.H.
Thorsteinsson, Director General at the Icelandic Met Office, says: “Pulling
together the expertise from our four countries allows us to prepare for the
future faster and more efficiently. Making our common forecasting
system operational is the culmination of five years of intense cooperation on
computer and models by the four institutes. It represents not only a technical
achievement but the confirmation that joining expertise and experience can lead
to greater things. My colleagues in Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands all
agree that, through the UWC-West collaboration, we are paving new ways for
weather services to work”.
A powerful collaboration is here to stay
Understanding weather and climate has never been more important. The latest reports from the IPCC and the WMO show that climate change is already causing more heatwaves, floods, and heavy rainfall around the world. These events are becoming more frequent and intense due to global warming caused by human activities, “All the experts who made this project possible acknowledge that by working together, the four national institutes can now respond better to weather events, helping to protect lives, property, and make smarter decisions as our climate continues to change”, explains Hildigunnur.
While the system is now operational, the UWC-West collaboration doesn't stop here. The four National Meteorological Services keep on working together on continuously evolving and improving the common forecasting model and implementing the latest improvements on it.
Hildigunnur says: “The powerful collaboration we have started is here to stay. The advancements of weather and climate research, on AI, big data and computing technology make our collaboration more needed than ever. Together we will gain more knowledge, push our weather models further and share much more data than before.”
Objectives of the UWC-West collaboration
New model coverage and characteristics
The new model domain extensively covers an area from East Greenland to southern Italy, dividing the geographical area in squares of 2km in size. The model represents the atmosphere vertically in the form of 90 levels, a substantial increase from the 65 levels of the previous operational model. These are resolution improvements which translate into better representation of the meteorological parameters across the domain.
The United Weather Centres West collaboration has created a new weather model with two forecasting domains, covering the four countries' areas of interest. Red area shows the Iceland and Greenland domain, blue area shows the Iceland, Denmark, Ireland, and the Netherlands domain.
For the Icelandic Met Office, this means that a new weather model run conducted for Iceland and Greenland on the supercomputer will become our main weather forecast. (Red area in the image above, IG) This model run is executed at a higher resolution than the older ones, both horizontally and vertically. In addition, the forecast duration is increased to 72 hours, and the forecasts are run eight times a day.
The latter model run in the UWC collaboration (blue area in the image above, DINI) is executed in an ensemble forecasting mode. It is run over a very large area covering all the countries with the same horizontal and vertical resolution as that run for Iceland and Greenland.
Every hour, one main run and five forecasts based on slightly altered conditions are conducted. Every three and six hours, these forecasts are collected into an ensemble forecast to assess the probabilities of, for example, precipitation or wind speed over certain thresholds.
Facts | Climate/weather models and computational capability
- Weather forecasts are based on extensive observations from satellites, radars, weather balloons, ground station sensors, and a variety of other sources.
- NWP models simulate the atmosphere using complex codes and equations.
- NWP models are run a number of times with slightly different initial conditions. This allows to understand prediction uncertainties and is known as an Ensemble Prediction System (EPS).
- High computational capability is crucial for both weather forecasting and climate modelling.
Facts | United Weather Centres West
- Collaboration between the National Meteorological Services (NMSs) of Ireland, Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands
- Collaboration established in 2019
- Procured a common supercomputing system, consisting of two units, one dedicated to operational weather forecasting and another one dedicated to climate research.
- Supercomputer location: Iceland
- Energy Source: Renewable Icelandic hydropower and geothermal energy
- Developed a common Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model system
- NWP model resolution: 2×2 km horizontally, 90 vertical levels
- NWP model update frequency: hourly, with 30 EPS members running every 6 hours.
- The four NMSs commonly operate and maintain the supercomputer and model system
UWC-West supercomputer facts
