The Meteorological Agency on Tuesday unveiled a new supercomputer for forecasting typhoons and weather with roughly 20 times the computing speed of the current model.
The computer will be installed Thursday in the agency's weather satellite center in Kiyose, in northwest Tokyo, marking the first upgrade in five years.
In addition to improving the accuracy of forecasts, the new computer will allow the agency to provide forecasts of typhoon data, such as pressure and velocity, up to 48 hours ahead, compared with the current forecast range of 24 hours, the officials said.
The new computer, leased for around 1.2 billion yen per year from a Japanese manufacturer, can do 770 billion calculations per second.