Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the High-Performance Computing (HPC) system – tailored for weather and climate research, acquired by the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

The ambitious project represents an investment of Rs 850 crore, marking a significant leap in India’s computational capabilities for more reliable and accurate weather and climate forecasting, particularly extreme events. It is located at two key sites—the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), 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.

With this augmentation, the Ministry of Earth Sciences will enhance its total computing power to 22 Peta FLOPS, a substantial increase from the previous capacity of 6.8 Peta FLOPS, an official release said Friday.

In keeping with tradition, these state-of-the-art systems have been named after celestial entities connected to the sun. Previous systems were named Aditya, Bhaskara, Pratyush, and Mihir. The new HPC systems are aptly named ‘Arka’ and ‘Arunika,’ reflecting their connection to Surya—the sun, the primary energy source for the Earth system.

The enhanced computational framework will enable the development of sophisticated models leveraging advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, thereby significantly improving the last-mile services rendered to various stakeholders.

The enhanced computational capabilities provided by the HPC System will allow the Ministry of Earth Sciences 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.

Leveraging these advanced HPC Systems, the Ministry of Earth Sciences aims to significantly improve the precision and reliability of weather forecasts, ensuring better preparedness and response to the challenges posed by climate variability and extreme weather events.