mo4ch:>Met Office forecasters set for 'billion pound' supercomputer | Mo4ch News

Met Office forecasters set for 'billion pound' supercomputerBy David ShukmanScience editor 17 February 2020 Image copyrightMet OfficeImage captionStorm Ciara caused widespread wind and flooding damageEver wondered why your village was suddenly flooded by a thunderstorm the weather forecasters hadn't mentioned?Or why they failed to warn you about the dense fog shrouding your home in the morning?The fact is that predicting the "big picture" of future conditions has got a lot better - Storm Dennis was spotted six days before it arrived.But getting local forecasts right - street by street and hour by hour - is still a massive challenge.And that might now change as the Met Office secures the help of a supercomputer project costing £1.2bn. Better forecasting means handling more data, more rapidly, and running it through simulations of the atmosphere more accurately.Already the Met Office is pulling in more than 200 billion observations from satellites, weather stations an…