In a major boost to the farming sector, which relies heavily on local climatic conditions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a cutting-edge High-Performance Computing (HPC) system designed for advanced weather and climate research. This system is set to provide farmers with timely alerts, improving their ability to respond to changing weather patterns.
The ambitious Rs 850 crore initiative by the Ministry of Earth Sciences represents a significant upgrade in India’s computing power for more precise and reliable weather forecasting, particularly for extreme weather events.
These state-of-the-art systems are housed at two key locations—the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) in Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
The IITM system boasts an impressive 11.77 PetaFLOPS of computing power and 33 petabytes of storage, while the NCMRWF facility offers 8.24 PetaFLOPS and 24 petabytes of storage. Additionally, a standalone system dedicated to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications has a capacity of 1.9 PetaFLOPS, according to an official statement.
This expansion increases the Ministry’s total computing power to 22 PetaFLOPS, up from the previous 6.8 PetaFLOPS, enhancing India’s ability to predict weather and climate events with greater accuracy.
In line with tradition, these systems have been named after celestial bodies linked to the sun. Previous systems were called Aditya, Bhaskara, Pratyush, and Mihir. The new HPC systems, named 'Arka' and 'Arunika,' symbolize their connection to Surya—the sun, Earth's primary source of energy.
These enhanced computational systems will enable the creation of more advanced weather models, leveraging AI and ML technologies to significantly improve services for various stakeholders. With this upgrade, the Ministry of Earth Sciences will be able to improve data assimilation and refine the physics and dynamics of global weather prediction models, offering higher-resolution forecasts.
Regional weather models, in particular, will achieve finer resolutions of 1 km or less in select Indian regions, allowing for more accurate predictions of tropical cyclones, heavy rainfall, thunderstorms, hailstorms, heatwaves, droughts, and other extreme weather events.
The Ministry’s advanced HPC systems aim to enhance the precision and reliability of weather forecasts, ensuring the country is better prepared to tackle climate variability and extreme weather challenges.
