Sunday, July 7, 2013

PAGASA to Enhanced Weather Forecasting with IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer

IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer that is capable of up to petaFLOPS (1015 Floating point operations per seconds, that's 1 quadrillion mathematical computations per second) will be used by PAGASA to enhanced weather forecasting up to 6-7 days. It will also be used on Genomics - study of living organisms for improvement of crops, livestock's and to the discovery of drugs and medicines.

Philippines is an archipelago and surrounded by bodies of water - in between Pacific Ocean and South China sea and we are on typhoon belt.

We are a natural laboratory to study climate and weather changes and tropical cyclones, we have a lot of data (rainfall, temperature, humidity, wind speed, etc) that need a complex processing to make better weather forecasting.


DOST-PAGASA IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer for Weather Forecasting

Mindanao was HIT by deadliest Typhoon SENDONG and PABLO on same month of December but on different year, 2011 and 2012 respectively with almost the same track. Do weather have the same pattern that are repeated every year or every season? I hope DOST-PAGASA Blue Gene Supercomputer will help us to analyze and predict complex weather patterns for accurate forecasting.

PAGASA typhoon forecast track is currently on 3 days and imagine if they can make it up to 6-7 days and more accurate. that would be a lot of time to prepare and alert everyone of incoming weather disturbance (formation of LPA and typhoons, amount of rainfall, where the typhoon will make a landfall and accurate wind strength)

How about if we can also make 3-6 months weather projections and weather patterns and provide farmers with information on the amount of rainfall on specific areas and aid them when is the best time to plant and harvest crops?

DOST-PAGASA have already (soon to arrived) an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer which will be operational this 4th quarter 2013. It is one of the fastest (now 3rd, next to Cray XK7 - Titan of USA and NUDT Tianhe-2 of China) and most power efficient supercomputer in the world developed by IBM.

We are the first country in Southeast Asia to acquire IBM's million-dollar supercomputer and we acquired it for just $10 thousand for shipment.

It is capable of 13.9 teraFLOPS (13.9 x 1012 floating point operations per second, that's 13.9 trillion mathematical computations per second) up to petaFLOPS operating speed and enable to process massive amount of data with low power consumption. It was awarded the 2008 National Medal Technology of Innovation.

DOST IBM Blue Gene supercomputer will be used for weather and climate modelling, genomics - study of living organisms and other R&D activities (by other government entities) in order to produce more benefits for the country.

I hope our country will put us in advanced towards accurate weather forecasting with this breakthrough instruments.


Sources:
DOST News
Wikipedia IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer



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