What is claimed to be the world鈥檚 first supercomputer dedicated solely
to research into climate change was put through its paces last week. The
twin Cray computers, at the Meteorological Office鈥檚 Hadley Centre at Bracknell,
can handle up to 2700 million arithmetical calculations per second, a big
jump in the computing capacity available to researchers.
The computers, funded by Britain鈥檚 Department of the Environment, will
allow scientists to run more sophisticated coupled atmosphere-ocean circulation
models of the world much faster than at present and help them consider the
impact of different greenhouse gas scenarios.
