The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday began using a sixth-generation high-performance computing system that is expected to improve the accuracy of its weather forecasts.
The system is a Fujitsu FX1000 high-speed computer built with 7-nanometer chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the meteorology agency said.
It is also equipped with 192 of Nvidia Corp’s A100 graphics processing units to meet requirements for running artificial intelligence (AI) applications, the agency said.
Photo: Ting Yi, Taipei Times
The system has a total performance capacity of 10 petaflops, which is seven times greater than the CWA’s fifth-generation system and is equivalent to an aggregate computing capacity of about 46,000 desktop computers, the agency said, adding that it is ranked 69th among the world’s top 500 high-speed computing systems.
The agency began building the system in 2021 and completed it last year at a total cost of NT$1.5 billion (US$47.54 million), CWA Administrator Cheng Chia-ping (程家平) told a ceremony celebrating the launch of the new system.
“Taiwan has a rather complex topography, with changes in temperatures and rainfall varying greatly in different regions of the country. As such, high-resolution data are needed to produce accurate weather forecasts,” Cheng said. “With the use of a sixth-generation high-performance computer, we estimate that the horizontal resolution would be improved to 1km from 3km under the previous system.”
“The accuracy of weather and climate forecasts in countries around Taiwan would also be enhanced, with the resolution for the global weather model being improved to 13km from 25km previously,” he added.
The new system would allow the weather agency to produce typhoon forecasts 10 days before their arrival, Cheng said.
Under the old system, the agency could only begin making forecasts about tropical storms and typhoons seven days ahead, he added.
Although many countries are able to produce weather forecasts faster with the use of AI technology, training the AI system is a complicated and long process, Cheng said.
“We are using weather data collected from the areas around Taiwan as the basis for training the AI system, with the goal of developing a new high-resolution weather forecast model that applies to areas around the nation,” he said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS