The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) yesterday secured NT$5 billion (US$179 million) from the Executive Yuan to strengthen its high-performance computing capability over the next 10 years, which would enhance the precision of the bureau’s numerical weather prediction.
The agency made the announcement after its budget plan was approved at a Cabinet meeting yesterday morning.
The funding would help the CWB expand its high-performance computer capacity to 150 quadrillion floating-point operations per second (petaFLOPS) from 2024 to 2034, the bureau said, adding that it would use the existing budget to first expand the capacity to 10 petaFLOPS from this year to 2023.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) supported the bureau’s budget plan as the world faces mounting challenges brought by more frequent occurrences of extreme weather, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said.
Many countries have invested huge amounts of resources in developing weather prediction technology, which would enable meteorologists to forecast developments in the atmosphere based on values generated through high-performance computing.
“The bureau’s plan to upgrade its computer system has the full backing of the premier, as precision in weather forecasts ensures the safety of Taiwanese and their properties,” Lo said.
In addition to the 10-year plan approved yesterday, the Cabinet in 2019 approved the bureau’s proposal to spend NT$2.9 billion on a four-year project to increase applications of weather data.
Last year, the Executive Yuan approved a NT$1.5 billion project to reinforce the infrastructure required for gathering weather data over the course of three years.
CWB Director-General Cheng Ming-dean (鄭明典) said that the bureau would be able to forecast weather further out with an empowered numerical weather prediction capability and refine weather forecasts in small towns.
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