Supercomputer company Cray will build a computer that will likely be able to perform around 1 million billion (!) calculations a second (a petaflop) and that will be solely dedicated to climate change research. Cray won a $47 million contract with the Department of Energy (DOE) in the United States to provide next-generation supercomputing power to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). According to Cray the machine will be the most powerful supercomputer completely dedicated to climate research.

Cray will supply research labs with their XT6 supercomputers in the second half of 2010 and in 2011 the company will launch the 'Baker'. The computers will be used to calculate, model and forecast weather patterns, ice melt, sea level rise and other climate-changing elements. The more powerful the computers the better the forecasts is the assumption.

Via Ecogeek