Prime Minister's Office of Spain

03/25/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 03/26/2021 02:12

Pedro Sánchez visits new supercomputer Cirrus at AEMET and National Forecast Centre

At the Data Processing Centre, Pedro Sánchez saw the work of the people who monitor the operations of the supercomputer that is currently in service, a version that will soon be replaced by the new supercomputer Cirrus.

Pedro Sánchez visited the room where the supercomputer Cirrus is currently being installed, which will be fully operational and replace the current one by the month of May, which will be the second most powerful supercomputer in Spain, after MareNostrum at the Barcelona National Supercomputing Center.

This supercomputer is the nerve centre of AEMET and the basis for information on weather forecasts. All the climate information for the last 125 years is stored there, aside from making weather forecasts thanks to the use of forecast models. These historical series allow information to be obtained to make new models and use them for the climate services which they seek to develop. This includes big data on climate that allow Spain's climate over the last century to be studied in order to make projections and simulations.

Thanks to the tremendous calculation potential of the new supercomputer, the numeric forecast models will be executed much quicker, which are essential for providing critical services such as warnings of adverse meteorological phenomena for air navigation services and defence services, among others, as well as new climate services and early warning services established in the National Climate Change Adaptation Plan (Spanish acronym: PNACC).

National Forecast Centre

Foto: Pool Moncloa/Fernando CalvoPresident of the Government Sánchez also visited the installations of the National Forecast Centre - the central unit of the National Forecast System (Spanish acronym: SNP), where he chaired the meteorological briefing on the coordination and integrated analysis of the weather situation with the participation of all the units that make up the SNP.

This protocol constitutes the starting point for the production processes of the forecasts, surveillance and the issue of adverse meteorological phenomena, which are operationally sent to the civil protection authorities, AENA and ENAIRE, among others.

This whole operation is based on an infrastructure of different observation networks, which it has been possible to renew thanks to the Next Generation EU Funds.

Data Processing Centre

Foto: Pool Moncloa/Fernando CalvoThe Data Processing Centre has shift workers covering operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to monitor and supervise AEMET's critical processes, which are the basis of the information offered on the web page and institutional apps of AEMET.

This is one of the most visited web pages of the Spanish public authorities. During the adverse weather episode caused by Storm Filomena, the AEMET institutional web page hit an all-time high in the number of pages visited of 33,427,524 on 8 January 2021.

Non official translation