Japan has grown tired of big, unpredictable storms. His Solution: A Weather Supercomputer

Japan released August 2022 sky slope. And not for good reasons. After registering downpours the likes of which have not been seen for decades in various parts of the country and rains that discharged almost 150 mm/h, its Meteorological Agency (JMA) chose to declare the state of high alert. His great fear: that the storm would end up leading to floods, landslides and overflowing rivers.

The storm in August was perhaps particularly intense, but of course It was not an exceptional case in Japan, a country accustomed to typhoons and with a subtropical climate that exposes it to torrential rains. The next time you face a similar situation, yes, you will be better prepared: Fujitsu has just delivered a supercomputer system to JMA that seeks to improve its ability to predict downpours. Or, what is the same, the margin of reaction.

Its objective is to anticipate the appearance of “linear rainbands”, formations of clouds cumulonimbus They advance slowly or even remain for hours over the same area, unloading heavy rains, which can easily lead to floods or landslides, as the Japanese authorities feared in August last year.

Goal: more accurate and faster forecasts

“With the new system, Fujitsu will support JMA in its efforts to provide faster and more accurate forecasts, allowing authorities to better prepare for heavy rain events and provide earlier warnings in case of disasters,” the Japanese multinational stands out. The supercomputer also arrives, he assures, when heavy rains represent “a risk growing“.

The system is based on Fujitsu hardware Supercomputer PRIMEHPC PX1000, which in turn has the same A46FX CPU as Fugaku, the supercomputer at the Riken Center for Computer Science in Kobe. The Japanese agency has been using Fugaku for more than half a year to develop technology for forecasting, work that can now be used in the new system.

“Reaching a theoretical maximum performance of around 31.1 petaflops (PFLOPS), the new system will help the JMA significantly improve the accuracy of its linear rainband forecast,” Fujitsu highlights. On a technical level, the supercomputer consists of 24 racks and high-speed storage with capacity for 42.3 petabytes The company is confident that it will become one of the 50 best on the planet within the “TOP 500” classification.

To prevent its devices from being damaged by earthquakes or floods, the new system has been installed in a Fujitsu data center prepared for natural disasters. At least until a few days ago, the objective of the multinational was to start operating now at the beginning of march to improve the precision and speed of the forecasts of the Japanese agency. According to Interesting Engineeringthe new supercomputer system will be able to anticipate natural disasters between six and 12 hours in advance.

“At present, the results of calculations of a numerical forecast model (mesomodel) with a horizontal resolution of 5 kilometers are mainly used to determine the mid-day advance warning of the possibility of heavy precipitation due to linear precipitation zones, but To improve the accuracy of the forecasts, a supercomputer capable of calculating with a finer resolution has been installed”, they clarify from the agency itself.

During this same year, he actually hopes to reach a precision level of 2 km. Looking to the future, he aspires to continue improving his model and reach 1 km.

“We will work to strengthen support for disaster management activities,” guarantees the JMAwhich advances that the greater computing power will also revert to information capacity, including notices for each prefecture.

Images: Fujitsu and JMA