Jess Robertson: Earth Sciences NZ spokesperson on the new supercomputer set to boost weather predictions

A new $35-million-dollar supercomputer is levelling up the country's weather predictions.

Earth Sciences New Zealand says the new Cascade system is three times more powerful than its predecessor - helping provide earlier and more frequent forecasting.

It's hoped the computer's advanced modelling capabilities could mitigate the impact of severe weather events.

Spokesperson Jess Robertson says the machine is an 'absolute beast'.

"It'll do more calculations in a day than you could do in 30 million years, and that mean's we're going to be able to run higher resolution forecasts quicker and get them out to people sooner."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now the country's largest supercomputer is officially online and we're
using it to predict the weather. Earth Sciences in z
which was formerly NIEWA, has acquired the new tech for
a cool thirty five million dollars. Jess Robertson is the
chief Science Scientist for Advanced Technology at Earth Sciences, New Zealand,
and is with us.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Now, Hey Jess, good to Heather, how are you doing well?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Thank you? Now? Is the supercomputer going to make our
weather prediction more accurate?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh? Look, we absolutely hope. So. I mean it's an
absolute beast, this thing that's sixty eight thousand cores. It'll
do more calculations in a day than you could do
in thirty million years, and that means we're going to
be able to run a higher resolution forecasts quicker and
get them out to people sooner. So really looking forward
to what it can do.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah. So if we had had this tech back in
twenty twenty three, could we have better plan for Cyclone
Gabriel all the Auckland floods?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah? Look, I mean this is certainly one of the
big questions. It's really really hard to predict these really
extreme events when they roll through One of the things
that we want to be able to do with The
new super computer has run ultra high resolution forecast, So
for example, over Auckland we have a three hundred meter
resolution forecast at super high resolution. Team New Zealand used

(01:10):
that to win the America's Cup. We want to be
able to roll those out to other areas when we
have events like cyclone Gabriel rolling in, so that we
can better prepare people on the ground for what's coming
down the pikats and so.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Do we have enough I mean, one of the things
with these really big computers in AI and stuff like
that is the lack of energy or the need for energy.
Have we got enough energy for this thing?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
We do, actually, and we've been really pleased with how
much energy it has actually used. It's ended up using
about thirty percent less energy than we thought it was
going to. We've got this, We've got this hosted up
here with our partner's CDC here in Auckland. It's run
on one hundred percent renewable energy. So that's while the
energy is kind of a big cost of running one

(01:53):
of these machines, we've sort of made it as planet
friendly as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Basically, Jess do you live in Auckland or Wellington.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
I actually live in christ Church at the moment.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Do you know anything about what happens seasonally? I want
to know whether it's worth staying in Auckland for the
first week of the school holidays in late September to
see if I would I be able to swim.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Rom I being over well I think you have to
go and have a look at our five week forecast,
which one of our yeah we do as an a
there's an AI five week forecast. It's called me We're
thirty five because we haven't done the rebrand yet, but
eventually we'll update the acronym and that gives you sort
of roughly roughly five weeks out. I think three weeks
out for that kind of start of September. It is

(02:33):
looking wet for the North Island. We were thinking it's
probably going to be wet for the All Blacks game
and Wellington. Unfortunately, A really, really big benefit though as
a christ Church person is we're looking at a massive
dump of snow down in Southern Alps tonight. So unfortunately
I'll be stuck in Wellington tomorrow. But if I was
back home and christ Church, get must eve on Hey,
thanks for that.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
That's actually really useful to know that you've got a
five week forecast. Jess robertson Earth Scientist for Advanced Technology
at Earth Science is New Zealand formerly known as New
Where You're gonna have to get used to it. For
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