Over at e-Infrastructure, Adriana Hamacher writes that the UK Met Office is using a new supercomputer-powered model called ENDGame to forecast the England’s notoriously unpredictable weather. Using a virtual model of the UK, the technology enables meteorologists to pinpoint the weather at 100 metre points on the ground and up to 11 miles above ground.
ENDGame is an evolution of the current dynamical core, the New Dynamics, and is based on a semi-implicit semi-lagrangian discretization of the governing equations. In common with the New Dynamics, ENDGameis a finite-difference model discretised on a latitude-longitude grid and is based on the fully compressible, nonhydrostatic Euler equations. However, distinct from the New Dynamics, ENDGame has been designed to allow the code to be switchable between various options: a nonhydrostatic and a hydrostatic formulation; deep-atmosphere and shallow-atmosphere formulations, and use of spheroidal, spherical or Cartesian co-ordinates (as appropriate).
Ten years in development, ENDGame will be deployed regionally starting next year. It’s hoped that the model will be able to accurately predict the thunderstorms, black ice, and flash floods which are caused by weather systems too severe or small to be seen by current programs. Scientists at the Met Office claim the reliability will improve to 80 per cent, allowing scientists to take into account much smaller changes in the gulfstream and Arctic sea ice coverage that impact the British climate.
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