Met computer produces CO2 emissions of a small town
August 28, 2009
A super computer installed at the Met Office’s headquarters to help predict weather systems and climate change uses enough energy to power a small town a recent survey showed.
The computer was installed earlier this year and cost tax payers £30 million. It is capable of 1000 billion calculations every second and is more powerful than 100,000 personal computers. However it produces 12,000 tonnes of CO2 every year.
Friends of the Earth spokesman Maurice Spurway said: “Life is full of ironies and I think this is one of those situations.”
However, Barry Grommett from the Met Office defended the machine. He said: “We would be throwing ourselves back into the dark ages of weather forecasting if we withdrew our reliance on supercomputing, it’s as simple as that.”
The super computer caused the Met Office some embarrassment recently by predicting that Britain would have a “barbeque summer”. However this never happened as the rain fell.
Grommett said that the computer off set its carbon footprint by producing forecasts for the aviation industry which led to savings of 20 million tonnes in CO2 emissions every year.
He also claimed that the Met Office has always had a large carbon footprint.
Thanks to www.telegraph.co.uk for the above quotes, for more information on this article please visit their website.
Related Posts
Comments
Advertisement
