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Speaker 1: Now the country's largest supercomputer is officially online and we're

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Speaker 1: using it to predict the weather. Earth Sciences in z

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Speaker 1: which was formerly NIEWA, has acquired the new tech for

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Speaker 1: a cool thirty five million dollars. Jess Robertson is the

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Speaker 1: chief Science Scientist for Advanced Technology at Earth Sciences, New Zealand,

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Speaker 1: and is with us.

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

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Speaker 1: Thank you? Now? Is the supercomputer going to make our

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Speaker 1: weather prediction more accurate?

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Speaker 2: Oh? Look, we absolutely hope. So. I mean it's an

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Speaker 2: absolute beast, this thing that's sixty eight thousand cores. It'll

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Speaker 2: do more calculations in a day than you could do

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Speaker 2: in thirty million years, and that means we're going to

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Speaker 2: be able to run a higher resolution forecasts quicker and

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Speaker 2: get them out to people sooner. So really looking forward

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Speaker 2: to what it can do.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So if we had had this tech back in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, could we have better plan for Cyclone

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Speaker 1: Gabriel all the Auckland floods?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? Look, I mean this is certainly one of the

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Speaker 2: big questions. It's really really hard to predict these really

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Speaker 2: extreme events when they roll through One of the things

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Speaker 2: that we want to be able to do with The

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Speaker 2: new super computer has run ultra high resolution forecast, So

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Speaker 2: for example, over Auckland we have a three hundred meter

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Speaker 2: resolution forecast at super high resolution. Team New Zealand used

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Speaker 2: that to win the America's Cup. We want to be

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Speaker 2: able to roll those out to other areas when we

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Speaker 2: have events like cyclone Gabriel rolling in, so that we

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Speaker 2: can better prepare people on the ground for what's coming

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Speaker 2: down the pikats and so.

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Speaker 1: Do we have enough I mean, one of the things

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Speaker 1: with these really big computers in AI and stuff like

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Speaker 1: that is the lack of energy or the need for energy.

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Speaker 1: Have we got enough energy for this thing?

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Speaker 2: We do, actually, and we've been really pleased with how

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Speaker 2: much energy it has actually used. It's ended up using

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Speaker 2: about thirty percent less energy than we thought it was

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Speaker 2: going to. We've got this, We've got this hosted up

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Speaker 2: here with our partner's CDC here in Auckland. It's run

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Speaker 2: on one hundred percent renewable energy. So that's while the

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Speaker 2: energy is kind of a big cost of running one

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Speaker 2: of these machines, we've sort of made it as planet

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Speaker 2: friendly as possible.

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Speaker 1: Basically, Jess do you live in Auckland or Wellington.

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Speaker 2: I actually live in christ Church at the moment.

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Speaker 1: Do you know anything about what happens seasonally? I want

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Speaker 1: to know whether it's worth staying in Auckland for the

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Speaker 1: first week of the school holidays in late September to

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Speaker 1: see if I would I be able to swim.

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Speaker 2: Rom I being over well I think you have to

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Speaker 2: go and have a look at our five week forecast,

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Speaker 2: which one of our yeah we do as an a

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Speaker 2: there's an AI five week forecast. It's called me We're

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Speaker 2: thirty five because we haven't done the rebrand yet, but

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Speaker 2: eventually we'll update the acronym and that gives you sort

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Speaker 2: of roughly roughly five weeks out. I think three weeks

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Speaker 2: out for that kind of start of September. It is

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Speaker 2: looking wet for the North Island. We were thinking it's

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Speaker 2: probably going to be wet for the All Blacks game

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Speaker 2: and Wellington. Unfortunately, A really, really big benefit though as

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Speaker 2: a christ Church person is we're looking at a massive

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Speaker 2: dump of snow down in Southern Alps tonight. So unfortunately

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Speaker 2: I'll be stuck in Wellington tomorrow. But if I was

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Speaker 2: back home and christ Church, get must eve on Hey,

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Speaker 2: thanks for that.

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Speaker 1: That's actually really useful to know that you've got a

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Speaker 1: five week forecast. Jess robertson Earth Scientist for Advanced Technology

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Speaker 1: at Earth Science is New Zealand formerly known as New

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Speaker 1: Where You're gonna have to get used to it. For

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Speaker 1: more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to News

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