A new Met Éireann weather and climate “supercomputer” has become operational for “more timely weather forecasting”, in collaboration with three other National Meteorological Services.
The National Meteorological Institutes of Ireland, Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands have joined forces for the new operation, with the “supercomputer” being based in Iceland.
The technology will be powered entirely by renewable Icelandic hydropower and geothermal energy sources. The running costs and CO2 footprint will be kept to a minimum, as part of the institutes’ contributions towards net-zero.
Met Éireann stated that it will help each nation in preparation for “the impacts of weather patterns”, which the forecaster said will “become more extreme”.
The new model domain extensively covers an area from East Greenland to southern Italy, dividing the geographical area in squares of 2km in size.
This is an improvement compared to the previous 2.5km grid of the previous model version Met Éireann operated.
‘Supercomputer’
The model represents the atmosphere vertically in the form of 90 levels, a substantial increase from the 65 levels of the previous operational model.
These are resolution improvements which translate into better representation of the meteorological parameters across the domain.
The new model is running every hour, while the previous computing capabilities allowed to run it every three hours.
This means more timely model updates to the forecasters, feeding the Met Éireann processes for updating the forecast and issuing weather warnings.
Direct of Met Éireann, Eoin Moran said: “Making our common forecasting system operational is the culmination of five years of intense cooperation on computer and models by the four institutes.
“It represents not only a technical achievement but the confirmation that joining expertise and experience can lead to greater things.”
Heat stress
Meanwhile, Copernicus Climate Change Service released details this week, of a record-breaking “heat stress” period in southeastern Europe during summer 2024.
Heat stress is an indicator of how different thermal environments affect the human body, and is monitored through the Universal Thermal Climate Index.
In southeastern Europe, local population experienced “strong heat stress” for 66 days in summer 2024, with up to 60% more “warm day times” than average.
This is the highest number of “strong heat stress” days on record for southeastern Europe by a large margin, considering that the average number of days with strong heat stress during summer is around 29.