October 18 will be the day of the so-called “switch”, in other words, the ECMWF Data Centre in Reading, UK, will cease to exist and will make its debut in Bologna, IT. From that day, the global forecasts realised from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), will be coming out of the Emilia-Romagna Region headquarters.
“At this moment, we are finalising the tests on our supercomputer” - explains Matteo Dell'Acqua, legal representative of ECMWF in Italy and Director of the Data Centre - “On 18 October, everything will run from the Bologna Hub. Last week, we started to move archives which are still in the UK: it will take almost a month to complete the transfer. We have a global computer model which studies the phenomenon and makes forecasts on Earth. It is composed of 50 computer models which run in parallel with a 17km resolution” - explains Dell'Acqua - “Once production starts in Bologna, having greater computing power available will give the new system a 9km resolution. This is this year's target, then, in the coming years, we aim to arrive at 5km.”