The £1 billion new supercomputer is set to transform weather forecasting.
The Office's current Cray XC40 supercomputer, installed in 2016, can perform 14,000 trillion calculations-per-second, processing 215 billion weather observations per day from all over the world.
Currently, the worldwide standard forecasting model of Earth is divided into 10 km squares but, in UK, Met Office forecasts are more accurate, with 1,500 m divisions. The new computing capacity will reduce the UK’s increments to 100 m squares.
The current XC40 supercomputer is due to expire in late 2022; the replacement will provide up to 6-times the capacity, with a predicted lifespan of 10 years from 2022. It will be the most powerful such computer in the world.
The Government is reported to be spending £1.2 billion on the project - £854 million on the supercomputer itself, with the remainder invested in the observation network over the 10 years.