(ANSA) - BOLOGNA, 25 OCT - "It will be five times more powerful" and will be used, to put it in a metaphor, to take ever clearer photographs of the weather forecast.
So Professor Matteo Dell'Acqua, the head of the Data Center of the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (Ecmwf), who is about to move from Reading (Gb) to Bologna, talks about the new creature that will be the beating heart of the forecasts.
A supercomputer that when fully operational will be a world top ten.
The new supercomputer, which will arrive at the Bologna Technopole by the end of the year net of unforeseen events, will need exactly one year - starting from the physical installation - to permanently retire the one currently operating from Great Britain.
It will allow Member States to know more and more precisely where and when extreme phenomena are likely to occur, such as a water bomb or a marine trumpet.
Key information to prevent tragedies such as those experienced less than a month ago in Piedmont, Liguria and France from repeating themselves.
The greater computing power, Professor Dell'Acqua explains to ANSA, will make it possible to tighten the meshes of the three-dimensional grid around the globe from which the data - temperature, humidity, wind ... - arrive in order to obtain weather forecasts.
System tests are currently underway in Reading on a miniature version of the supercomputer, on a model that will always remain a sort of guinea pig for all the updates that will have to be made on the computer in the future.
(HANDLE).
