# Met Office deploys 60-petaflops cloud supercomputer for weather forecasting

- Published: 2026-11-07 00:56 UTC
- Section: Digital & Computing › Computers
- Tags: Met Office supercomputer, cloud supercomputing, weather forecasting HPC, MASS archive, climate simulations
- URL: https://realtech.media/news/rt-1817e53536ace4e64181dbed_met_office_deploys/

**The UK Met Office has put a fully managed cloud supercomputing platform into operational use to accelerate weather simulations and climate science.**

![Met Office deploys 60-petaflops cloud supercomputer for weather forecasting](https://realtech.media/media/2026/11/62e7131a963e137b.jpg)
*Cmax18, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0*

The UK Met Office has completed a major milestone in its supercomputing programme by moving its operational forecasting and climate research to a fully managed cloud platform, according to metoffice.gov.uk [1]. Delivered in phases alongside Microsoft, the system provides a computing capacity of approximately 60 quadrillion calculations per second across around 1.8 million processor cores [1]. The implementation protects service continuity while increasing processing throughput for national meteorology services [1].

## Computational capacity and data pipeline

The new high-performance architecture ingests and processes more than 50 billion individual weather observations on a daily basis [1]. Alongside the compute cluster, the Met Office migrated its storage pipeline to a cloud-based Managed Archive Storage System (MASS), replacing the previous on-premises archive hardware located in Exeter [1]. This storage setup is designed to store the escalating data volumes generated by higher-resolution atmospheric models [1].

The hardware replacement took place across two primary stages [1]. Phase one established a like-for-like operational baseline to mirror the previous on-premises system without service interruptions, while phase two scaled the operational cluster to its current performance profile [1]. Managing operations through a dedicated cloud service grants 24-hour maintenance and infrastructure security directly from the vendor [1].

## Simulation resolution and application domains

The upgraded platform improves how physics models resolve atmospheric events, including precipitation formation and localized weather processes [1]. Scientists can run climate projection models at significantly finer grid resolutions while running larger ensemble simulations simultaneously [1]. These ensembles allow researchers to assess atmospheric risks with higher statistical confidence [1].

Operational outputs from the system supply forecasts and warnings across civil sectors including aviation, transport, flood defense, and energy grid management [1]. According to the agency, the system's enhanced predictive capacity is projected to generate £11.3 billion in socioeconomic benefits across the United Kingdom [1].

## Sources

1. [metoffice.gov.uk](https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/blog/2026/met-office-completes-world-first-cloud-supercomputing-transformation)
2. [Interesting Engineering](https://interestingengineering.com/science/supercomputer-upgrade-weather-climate)

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Source: RealTech, realtech.media — https://realtech.media/news/rt-1817e53536ace4e64181dbed_met_office_deploys/