A £5.7 million investment in a compute cluster will triple the processing power for analysing atmospheric science data, available for scientists to use this summer. 

Known as LOTUS, an expanded parallel compute cluster will allow a much greater volume of computing tasks and multiple streams of data analysis to be done at the same time.

Tripling the current capacity to around 55,000 compute cores, LOTUS users – of which there are currently 1500 – will experience better performance and reduced task queuing time.

Scientists will be able to use the renewed LOTUS cluster to analyse climate change, air pollution, and weather data – as well as other environmental science topics and issues such as oceanography, wildlife populations, and earthquake damage. 

LOTUS is part of JASMIN, a data intensive supercomputer used by researchers at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science with support from the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis. 

The investment comes from UK Research and Innovation, commissioned by the Natural Environment Research Council, and delivered by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.