New Bureau supercomputer successfully commissioned

19/11/2016

The Bureau of Meteorology's new supercomputer has been installed and it is now successfully supporting the Bureau’s capacity to predict the weather.

Deputy Director of Information Systems and Services Dr Lesley Seebeck says the successful commissioning of the Cray supercomputer in June 2016 is a major milestone for the Bureau and demonstrates the organisation's capacity to deliver large and complex ICT initiatives.

"The increased computing power will allow the Bureau to undertake a programme of improvements to enhance the frequency, accuracy and certainty of forecasts in the coming years" Dr Seebeck said.

While many of the improvements at first will be internal to the Bureau, the Australian public should start to see improvements in forecasts from January 2017.

The Bureau received funding in the 2014–15 Budget for the supercomputer programme to invest in both the new computing hardware and software improvements to Numerical Weather Prediction modelling and forecast products.