Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is working to develop climate models that will help prevent extreme weather events, part of a push to set up a public supercomputer that can use millions of data points to tackle national challenges.
Mexican researchers will work along with Barcelona’s Supercomputing Centre to standardise Mexico’s weather data to improve climate forecasts and early warnings, according to Fabián Vázquez Romaña, the coordinator of the National Meteorological Service.
While still in its early stages, the supercomputer has become one of Sheinbaum’s flagship initiatives. Named Coatlicue after an Aztec deity that was the mother of other gods and a source of energy, the project aims to give Mexico data-processing power equivalent to about 375,000 ordinary computers running at the same time. It will be used for climate predictions, energy planning and corruption prevention, among other issues.
The government will spend 6 billion pesos (US$340mil/RM1.35bil) on the supercomputer, which will reach 314,000 trillion operations per second – seven times more than Pegaso, Brazil’s largest supercomputer. Coatlicue will also have more than a hundred times the capacity of Mexico’s most advanced existing system, Yuca, located in Sonora, according to the government.
Construction has already begun near Mexico City, though it could take at least two years, Estefanía Capdeville, director of global cooperation at the Digital Transformation and Telecommunications Agency, said Wednesday alongside Vázquez Romaña at Mexico’s consulate in Barcelona.
For meteorological purposes, "the supercomputing is needed now,” Vázquez Romaña said. "We can’t wait another two years for everything to be installed in Mexico, he added, highlighting the need to move forward with the help of Spanish researchers.
Sheinbaum’s interest in climate science predates her time in office. The president holds a doctoral degree in energy engineering, completed her undergraduate thesis on thermodynamics and helped author two reports for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – one that won the group the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
In the first phase of work on creating climate models, teams will process thousands of weather data points collected since 1950 to fill in gaps where information is missing, using mathematical methods. Three different interpolation models will be tested initially and the one with the lowest margin error will be selected, Vázquez Romaña said.
The government will prioritise analysing data in the country’s most densely populated areas: the Valley of Mexico, home to Mexico City, and the metropolitan areas of Monterrey and Guadalajara. All three are also host venues for the upcoming FIFA World Cup of soccer starting in June.
No date has been set to start programming. But once it begins, results could be ready within a month and the system could start being used in Mexico immediately – potentially in time for the next rainy season, Vázquez Romaña said. "It’s a very important first step toward consistently improving weather forecasts,” he added.
In the longer term, the government plans to get the supercomputer to address data in sectors including customs, agriculture and artificial intelligence. – Bloomberg
