INR 850 crore HPC systems to bolster weather, climate research in India

NEW DELHI — In a bid to significantly improve the precision and reliability of weather forecast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated $850 crore high-performance computing (HPC) systems for weather and climate research, acquired by the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

Named ‘Arka’ and ‘Arunika’, the systems are located at two key sites — the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) in Noida.

The IITM system is equipped with an impressive capacity of 11.77 Peta FLOPS and 33 petabytes of storage, while the NCMRWF facility features 8.24 Peta FLOPS with 24 petabytes of storage.

Additionally, there is a dedicated standalone system for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning applications with a capacity of 1.9 Peta FLOPS, informed the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

With this, the ministry will enhance its total computing power to 22 Peta FLOPS, a substantial increase from the previous capacity of 6.8 Peta FLOPS.

The government aims to significantly improve the precision and reliability of weather forecast, ensuring better preparedness and response to the challenges posed by climate variability and extreme weather events.

According to the government, the computational framework will enable the development of sophisticated models leveraging advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

The HPC system will allow the ministry to further improve existing data assimilation capabilities and refine physics and dynamics of its global weather prediction models at higher horizontal resolution.

Furthermore, regional models will achieve finer resolutions of 1 km or less over select Indian domains.

These high-resolution models will significantly enhance the accuracy and lead time of predictions related to tropical cyclones, heavy precipitation, thunderstorms, hailstorms, heat waves, droughts, and other extreme weather phenomena.

On Thursday, PM Modi launched three Param Rudra supercomputers worth INR 130 crore and developed indigenously as part of the National Supercomputing Mission.