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Supercomputer for better climate prognoses

Published Apr 20, 2007

With better access to supercomputers, researchers in climatic change could obtain more reliable prognoses as to how the various activities of man do affect the weather. Funds amounting to SEK 25.4 million will now be appropriated to Stockholm University, KTH and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute for the purchase of a new climatic computer.

The appropriation is a joint undertaking by the Wallenberg Foundation and SNIC, Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing, a unit of the Swedish Research Council. This new effort aims to improve theoretical modelling of climatic and turbulence models; both of these are tools for predicting changes in the future climate.

– This funding will enable us to buy a computer of the same capacity as that of the great “Earth Simulator” in Japan, says Erland Källén, Professor at the Dept. of Meteorology, Stockholm University, who has assumed the main responsibility for the project. It will mean entirely new possibilities for us when various processes are to be described – factors affecting the climate, such as emissions from transports, coal-fired power stations, industries and other things resulting from man´s activities.

UN´s latest climate report emphasizes the fact that signals indicating an ongoing change in the climate do exist, yet future scenarios are still marred by a great degree of uncertainty. Some of these uncertainties do in fact occur from this lack of sufficient data computing power, resulting in prognoses not being sufficiently precise when it comes to describing how different factors caused by man affect the weather.

Here a fundamental part of these seemingly chaotic processes in the atmosphere is the turbulent mixing of air caused by whirlwinds of different sizes – as small as one millimetre, and up to one kilometre, or more. Basic research conducted at KTH and addressing turbulence has done a lot to improve climatic models, too. This research is performed at the Linné Flow Centre, with Dan Henningson, Professor of Fluid Mechanics, as Head of the unit.

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Last changed: Apr 20, 2007