Anticipating Mother Nature’s wrath

Giving people sufficient notice of an impending storm can make the difference between life and death. The Japan Meteorological Agency now can use a Fujitsu 31 PFLOPS supercomputer to do just that. We cannot control the weather, but given enough prior notice, we can reduce the loss of life that results from many natural disasters. For instance, computerized forecast models enable accurate tracking of hurricanes, so people in the danger zones can be forewarned as to the direction and intensity of the approaching storm days in advance. Naturally, the more advanced and powerful the computer system used to process the