The Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific magazines of the world, November 4th edition (no.468) releases an article about the supercomputer that has been installed at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The equipment will be amongst the most powerful ones in the world when in full operation capacity and will be used to improve the quality of meteorological forecasts and the development of future global and regional climate scenarios.
Entitled “Brazil’s climate modelers are set to go global”, the article is available here.
Among some other aspects, the magazine emphasizes the strengthening of the Brazilian climatic science in the international scenario, because the new equipment, a XT6 from Cray, that has been named “Tupã”, will place the country among the fewest that can contribute with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
The equipment had been purchased with funds from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT) and the Foundation for Research Support of São Paulo (FAPESP), the new supercomputing system is at INPE’s facility in Cachoeira Paulista (SP) and will attend both the Weather Forecast and Climate Studies and the Earth System Science centers, besides the research groups, institutions and universities member of the Brazilian research net on Climate Change (net Climate) from MCT, FAPESP programme on Global Climate Change along with the National Institute of Science and Technology on Climate Change.
The supercomputer will be very important for the development and implementation of the Brazilian Model of the Global Climate System, which incorporates the overall elements of the Earth System (atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, vegetation, biogeochemical cycles, etc.), their interactions and how this system is being disturbed by anthropogenic (e.g., emissions of greenhouse gases, changes in vegetation, urbanization, etc.). This effort involves a large number of Brazilian and foreign researchers, from different institutions, what makes an interdisciplinary project to develop climate modeling unprecedented among developing countries.
This supercomputer besides creating global climate models, expands the INPES processing capacity in 50 times and it will make weather forecasts more reliable, with many days in advance, with better quality, increasing the detail level to 5 km in South America and 20 km for the entire globe. It also might be possible to forecast extreme events with good reliability, as heavy rains, droughts, frosts, heat waves, among others. Both forecasts and the quality of the air will also have advantages, generating predictions of higher resolution of 15 km, close to six days in advance.
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