India’s fastest supercomputer will help scientists to predict weather forecasts and tsunami

Prathyush, India’s first multi-petaflops supercomputer will be used to accurately predict the weather forecast. Harsh Vardhan, the union minister for science and technology said after inaugurating the High Performance Computer (HPC) at the Indian Institute of Tropical Management (IITM), “With Pratyush, the supercomputer, monsoon predictions and early predictions of natural disasters like cyclone, tsunami and earthquake would now be predicted with more accuracy, and the government has invested Rs.450 crores for this system, since accurate climate and weather predictions have become the need of the hour.” 

Harsh Vardhan told that the government is sending text messages of weather forecast to more than 24 million farmers at present which has had a positive impact of 50000 crores in the GDP and recently, the predictions in the case of Ockhi cyclone helped in managing the situation, in a better way. He also added that a plan is being devised to provide the monsoon predictions at block-levels by 2019. Ravi Nanjundiah, the director of IITM told that this HPC facility will enable MoES scientists to use more detailed components to make better forecasts at the very high resolution and this will boost the research activities not only in MoES, but also in other institutions which are working on problems related to Earth Sciences.

Prathyush HPC facility will help MoES scientists to make better weather and climate forecasts at the block-level at very high resolution. With Prathyush, it will now be possible to improve ocean state forecasts, tsunami forecasts with better lead time, air quality forecasts for smart cities and climate projections at very high resolution is possible.