The original press release from the Met Office that started this story is here. There’s no mention of a carbon footprint in it, but they did manage to provide a photo of it with a green halo, shown below. When such a machine is powered up, does it make a “giant sucking sound’? In other news, Obama inauguration sets new record for private jet use. – Anthony
Met Office forecasts a supercomputer embarrassment
A new £33m machine purchased to calculate how climate change will affect Britain, has a giant carbon footprint of its own
For the Met Office the forecast is considerable embarrassment. It has spent £33m on a new supercomputer to calculate how climate change will affect Britain – only to find the new machine has a giant carbon footprint of its own.
“The new supercomputer, which will become operational later this year, will emit 14,400 tonnes of CO2 a year,” said Dave Britton, the Met Office’s chief press officer. This is equivalent to the CO2 emitted by 2,400 homes – generating an average of six tonnes each a year.
The Met Office recently published some of its most drastic predictions for future climate change. It warned: “If no action is taken to curb global warming temperatures are likely to rise by 5.5ºC and could rise as much as 7ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Early and rapid reductions in CO2 emissions are required to avoid significant impacts of climate change.”
However, when it came to buying a new supercomputer, the Met Office decided not to heed its own warnings. The ironic problem was that it needed the extra computing power to improve the accuracy of its own climate predictions as well as its short-term weather forecasting. The machine will also improve its ability to predict extreme events such as fierce localised storms, cloudbursts and so on.
Alan Dickinson, Met Office Director of Science and Technology, said: “We recognise that running such massive computers consumes huge amounts of power and that our actions in weather and climate prediction, like all our actions, have an impact on the environment. We will be taking actions to minimise this impact.”
Dickinson believes, however, that the new computer will actually help Britain cut carbon emissions on a far greater scale than those it emits. He said: “Our next supercomputer will bring an acceleration in action on climate change through climate mitigation and adaptation measures as a consequence of a clearer understanding of risk. Ultimately this will lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”
Machines like the Met Office’s new computer are important tools in the battle to slow climate change. They are the only way to assess the potential impact of rising CO2 levels over the coming years and decades.
This is because producing even a short-range weather forecast requires billions of calculations, something that would take weeks to do by hand. Computers enable forecasts to be generated in time to be useful.
Dickinson said: “Our existing supercomputer and its associated hardware produce 10,000 tonnes of CO2 each year, but this is a fraction of the CO2 emissions we save through our work. We estimate that for the European aviation industry alone our forecasts save emissions close to 3m tonnes by improving efficiency.
“Our next supercomputer will bring an acceleration in action on climate change through climate mitigation and adaptation measures as a consequence of a clearer understanding of risk. Ultimately this will lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”
When it is finally completed, around 2011 the Met Office machine will be the second most powerful machine in Britain with a total peak performance approaching 1 PetaFlop — equivalent to over 100,000 PCs and over 30 times more powerful than what is in place today.
However, supercomputers and data centres require vast amounts of power – a problem that increasingly confronts the global information technology industry. Last week Google admitted its systems generate 0.2g of CO2 per search, even though each one lasts just 0.2 seconds.
Slightly OT but about the BBC’s objectivity (or lack of it) in their reporting – it appears that they have adjusted Barack Obama’s inaugural speech, in one of their news programs, to make it seem like he was focussing on Global Warming more than he actually was. See here for more details.
“How much CO2 footprint is generated by getting into your car, and driving over to the Stanford, or Santa Clara, or San Jose University Library, and searching on foot to find that information stored on dead tree?”
In my case that would be onehellova lot, as I am in the UK.
OH and I Love this blog and all the Hithchiker’s guide to the Galaxy references.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the planet that is created, to figure out the question to the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything, was to expire five minutes early due to the effects of AGW?
Oh, but those wonderful Fjords!!!
“The BBC is there to inform and educate!”
No longer so. Today it is:
“The BBC is there to DISinform and RE-educate!”
Does this machine do Freecell?
So now, instead of producing gigabytes of meaningless numbers at the scale of x in 1 week, it will be able to produce petabytes of meaningless numbers at the scale of 0.1x in the space of a few days.
Couldn’t each taxpayer just spend 30 minutes a day writing down very big random numbers on a postcard and mailing to the Met Office – it would have as much skill in predicting our future climate…
“Arkansas (13:19:45) :
Dave Wendt (11:11:45)
I’m with, buddy. The whole point of industry is to improve the quality of life for the masses. Nobody but the elite want to go back to the days medieval. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, I speak only for myself, but I really liked what you had to say.”
Actually, the whole purpose of industry is to make a profit 🙂
JimB
Ron de Haan (16:27:15) :
“So if I understand your post correctly MetOffice is selling weather forecasts to the aviation industry and at the same time they undermine their own customer base by promoting AGW hysteria?
They must have a real “Genius” running the place.”
I see your drift but then remember that the airline’s leaders, or some of them like Branson at Virgin, are also keen on the AGW concept for reasons I can’t quite fathom other than being rich enough for they and their families not to have to worry about it too much.
Slowly over the last 2 decades or so and on many fronts even the hardiest of realists for humanity seem to be reduced to some form of acceptance of negative influence.
The Warmist surge leading up to the Obama election seems well timed from their perspective on many fronts, possibly even the renewables projects which may now obtain ‘government’ money where private equity investment would not have been forthcoming.
It’s a sort of tipping point, bit not one that people in the climate arena have been talking about openly.
What they may begin to realise, on the back of the collapse of carbon certificate trade prices in the EU market, is that the financial meltdown may already have instigated a more dramatic collapse in carbon output (therefore sellable, fortune-making scam bonds) far greater than policy targets could hope to achieve.
This real live experiment, unthinkable in stable times, may inform us about the consequences of long term reductionist policies. It will be interesting to see whether the politicians can escape their focused drive towards their current objectives and respond sensibly to the changing panorama that surrounds them.
‘Carbon Black’ may well be obsolete before it is fired up. Perhaps it already is?
“” Simon Evans (15:11:34) :
George E Smith,
East Antarctica is still cooling; so no problem there
You are misreporting Steig et al’s paper. Owing to uncertainty, East Antarctica may be cooling or it may be warming. You say that you’ve read their paper – may I suggest you read it again? “”
Thanks for the tip simon; I read it again; here’s the second paragraph in the paper. Well at least the paper as it is published on the Washington University web site.
“”” But new research shows that for the last 50 years, much of Antarctica has been warming at a rate comparable to the rest of the world. In fact, the warming in West Antarctica is greater than the cooling in East Antarctica, meaning that on average the continent has gotten warmer, said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the Quaternary Research Center at the UW. “””
So maybe I did misread his paper; I did find this in the paper though: “”” The study found that warming in West Antarctica exceeded one-tenth of a degree Celsius per decade for the last 50 years and more than offset the cooling in East Antarctica. “” and I also found this: “” Antarctica isn’t warming at the same rate everywhere, and while some areas have been cooling for a long time the evidence shows the continent as a whole is getting warmer. “””
But Simon, nowhere in the paper did I find anything like this: “”” Owing to uncertainty, East Antarctica may be cooling or it may be warming. “””
So maybe you could cite the reference where you found that !
And let’s just say that you are correct and Steig, Mann et al are all wrong.
So we don’t know if East Antarctica is warming or cooling; but it is 3 to 4 times the size of the warming West Antarctica, and is 10,000 feet mean elevation versus 6000 for West Antarctica. Seems a fairly safe bet that there is nothing to worry about; well at least not for the next 5000 years therabouts, which is how long it will take West Antarctica, at its present alarming rate of rise, to reach the melting point.
Well I’m being an alarmist here; Steig told me that only the surface is warming; not the whole how ever many thousands of feet that ice thickness is.
And Trenberth of the UN’s IPCC, says he is “skeptical” of Steig’s methodology and his results; something about making up data where there is none; maybe I got it wrong and it could have been John Christy of UAH who said that. I talked to so many people about it in the last couple of days, and I forgot to take notes.
But thank you for pointing out my error.
George
Thanks for that George. I get frustated when a paper that should be in the Public Domain is not, or is paywalled.
I, for one, am very grateful that you can both obtain such and precis the points for those of us who cannot.
If you read this, could you have a quick look in “The Infra Red Handbook” for me and tell what it says for CO2, N2, O, O2 and O3 please. Someone elsewhere is becoming pestilent about “centuries” of lifetime in atmosphere, and CO2’s blackbody qualities and none of us at the office who care about such things can agree either.
Thanks in advance,
Henry.
Let me see… The world is going to get 5.5-7 C warmer this century? This means 0.55-0.7 C per decade… We are near the end of the first decade of this century… And sofar, the warmning of this decade has been… 0? When is this supposed warmning going to start? Tomorrow?
Have you seen this poll?
Would you support a gas tax to fight foreign oil dependency and global warming? 87% said no way, 12% yes and 1% does not know.
I can see it now…..gas is cheap and we need to tax it to save the planet.
George,
The study confirms East Antarctic cooling in recent decades but found a slight (statistically insignificant) warming in East Antarctica over the whole period. Since we can neither reference the paper directly (it being behind a paywall), I’ll refer you here, as you have referred me to press reports:
In East Antarctica, where temperatures had been thought to be falling, the researchers found a slight warming over the 50-year period. With the uncertainties, East Antarctica may have indeed been cooling, but the rise in temperatures in the west more than offset the cooling.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/science/earth/22climate.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
I think that is very much in accord with my own summary, viz., ” Owing to uncertainty, East Antarctica may be cooling or it may be warming “, although it would have been more accurate to say “may have been…over the studied period”. Anyway, you’ve been in communication with Steig, so you can clarify this point if you wish. Perhaps our difference of statement is over whether we are describing the whole period studied or the ‘current situation’. On reflection, I think your statement probably refers to current conditions rather than to the longer trend, and thus I withdraw my challenge to what you said. 🙂
Well, I hope “Deep Black” helps the Met office get its seasonal forecasts right!!
This comes in the light of the UKMO finally conceding defeat with a forecast of an “average or colder than average” end to the winter. The original winter forecast clearly stated “average or warmer than average” which on each successive update as been changed to the colder side of average. So, in short – a cold start, a cold middle and finally a forecast for a cold end! Can’t wait to read the seasonal analysis!!
Ben
Now they can run their flawed computer models even faster!
The folks who think the globe is heating up because of AGW can now put their money where their mouth is: click
Heck, for that matter, anyone can play! [link source]