- Saturday, 11 July 2009
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It is a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing
Weather scientists demand more power
STORM-CHASING BOFFINS met in that little-known hothouse of scientific discovery, Reading, today to discuss how they are going to save the population of the planet from cyclones typhoons and tsunami.
And it seems that the answer to all of the world's weather problems can be solved if they're allowed to have a bigger computer (NASA have got a brilliant one and all the other scientists bully us 'coz ours is rubbish... and we need new trainers, innit).
The boffins, who use the machines to model weather patterns globally, say they need a centre with computing power of 100 petaflops – two thousand times greater they have access to today, according to The New Scientist.
But they will have to convince governments that a potential investment of hundreds of millions of dollars will be paid back in the form of tangible benefits like better water supplies, the prediction of droughts and increased yield in crops.
The current computers used to predict weather patterns aren't really up to the job. Atlantic hurricanes, European droughts and the behaviour of glacial ice flows have continued to elude them. µ
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...that the people who decry global warming want to get bigger computers that generate more heat, use more fossil fuels, and thus cause the weather to change more. 

Scientist: "Let's power this thing on"
Computer: "Temperature in this city has risen .3 degrees, icecaps are melting"
Scientist: "Brilliant! This computer is saving our lives"
Why not just start up a new distributed computing project for a fraction of the cost? Lots of people love to volunteer computer time, especially if the project is 'cool'.
...you also need the data. Setting up a denser sensor framework on land isn't difficult - it just costs more money. A big problem though, is getting a high enough data density from the areas covered by oceans, which is where most of the large weather systems form and build.