IBM Aids South Korea Weather Forecasting

IBM Corp. is helping South Korea’s Meteorological Administration (KMA) and its affiliate, the National Meteorological Satellite Center (NMSC), tackle data for more accurate environmental forecasting by providing KMA and NMSC with the storage technologies capable of recording GB/s (equivalent to 400,000 web pages).

"With a total storage capacity of 9.3PB, it is South Korea’s most powerful storage system to date," IBM said.

Every day KMA gathers more than 1.6TB of meteorological data, including temperature and barometric pressure readings, wind speeds and images, as well as observations from satellites, balloons, ships and aircraft.

The new infrastructure enables KMA and NMSC to analyze data more quickly and accurately than previously possible. By incorporating maps and historical data, KMA is able to develop tailored weather forecasts for each of South Korea’s nine regions.

Processing data in real time enables immediate updates on weather conditions. For example, meteorologists can predict more precisely the trajectory of a typhoon or the coverage of the Hwangsa, the sandstorms originating in Mongolia and Northern China that cause environmental problems in Korea in the spring season.

The system has enough power for localized weather-forecasting and related services.

The new system at KMA includes an IBM general parallel file system. IBM has also provided a high-capacity storage system to NMSC. Together, the systems provide secure access to a common set of data from multiple server