The Met Office has unveiled Britain's most powerful super computer, which is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second
However, they admitted that despite the £33 million system being more powerful than 100,000 PCs it could still get the forecast wrong.
The IBM computer, which is housed in special halls bigger than two football pitches, requires 1.2 megawatts of energy to run - enough to power a small town. It will provide meteorological information to a team of 400 scientists.
It was switched on this week but will take a staggering two MONTHS to fully boot-up. At peak performance it will perform 1,000 billion calculations per second, but this will not be reached until 2011.
The Met Office says the machine will improve day-to-day forecasting but will still not guarantee accuracy.
But it will help save millions of lives by predicting long-term patterns in global warming and forecasting extreme weather events such as typhoons and hurricanes.
Steve Foreman, chief technology officer at the Met Office, said: 'This computer will allow us to make the most accurate weather forecasts we have ever produced.
'People should be able to see a noticeable improvement in the accuracy of forecasting.
'Not only will it help us tell you what the weather will be like today and tomorrow, it will help create a much better long term picture.
'Obviously we can never predict the weather 100 per cent accurately, but this will help considerably.'
(Mail Online)
Here it is:
The man looking at it looks rather sceptical, doesn't he?
To me it looks like a row of portaloos. Perhaps he is waiting for someone to come out!
The Met Office is government funded: it is an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence.
We should probably think ourselves lucky that this latest computer only cost £33M. A couple of years ago the Met Office was talking about buying one for £200M.
Perhaps that will arrive next year!
See also: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6338014.ece
Bushka
Pro 
Let's hope.....