The Met Office has signed a multimillion-pound deal with Microsoft to build the world’s most advanced weather and climate forecasting supercomputer over the next ten years.
Expected to be in the top 25 supercomputers in the world and twice as powerful as any other in the UK – it will improve forecasting, help tackle climate change and ensure the UK remains at the forefront of climate science.
In combining the Met Office’s expertise, data gathering capacity and historical archive with the scale and power of supercomputing on Microsoft Azure, the new supercomputer will: accelerate understanding of climate change and transition to a low carbon economy; deliver a step-change in the precision of forecasting severe weather; support UK socio-economic growth and sustain and grow world-leading science, technology, innovation and skills in the UK.
Microsoft Azure’s Supercomputing-as-a-Service will enable the Met Office to leverage the best blend of dedicated and public cloud services and will integrate Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Cray supercomputers, a high-performance active data archive system, and other Azure cloud technologies, along with an end-to-end managed service to deliver the market leading Supercomputing-as-a-Service.
The partnership will also include innovation services to support the Met Office in harnessing future technologies, such as AI.