Exciting news from Wales.  Blue Ice, a new supercomputer has been unveiled at Pembroke Dock Swansea.  Prof. Tavi Murray, a leading glaciologist, is the team leader. NB. The article refers to Prof Murray as both Him & Her.  If any Welsh speakers are reading this,  can you tell us if ‘Tavi’ is a male or female christian name, please?  Thanks. 

Prof Murray said: “With many glaciers experiencing rapid thinning, time is of the essence in discovering the effects of these drastic changes.

It will allow researchers to convert vast amounts of scientific data on temperatures in thousands of locations into meaningful images, leading to better interpretation of the results.

According to the university, the icing on the cake is that the computer’s operation has also been specifically designed to be energy efficient.

Blue Ice is housed in a new “green” data centre and boasts energy efficient computer processing units which provide high performance computing within a small carbon footprint.

The computer, the latest from the series of IBM “blue” series, one of the first of which defeated Kasparov in 1997, can now make two trillion calculations per second.

Surrounded by a spectacular visualisation suite, the surprisingly small supercomputer will try to help Welsh scientists understand one of the most worrying modern climate trends: the thinning of polar ice sheets.

To read the full article please visit  BLUE ICE

PS. Blue ice is the term given to the ice which is melting at the toe of a glacier.  This ice appears blue. I’ll try to hunt out a picture for you.