Mexico pushes for public supercomputer to improve extreme weather forecasts

As extreme weather events grow more severe, Mexico will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a new supercomputer that the government hopes will predict such events earlier and more accurately, Bloomberg reported. 

Improved forecasts would allow officials to issue warnings for weather-related disasters sooner, giving governments, businesses, and individuals more time to prepare. 

Dubbed "Coatlicue" after an Aztec goddess, Mexico's new supercomputer could be as powerful as 375,000 typical computers operating simultaneously, according to E&E News.

This would make Coatlicue capable of computing 314,000 trillion operations per second, about 100 times more than Mexico's current most powerful supercomputer, per E&E News.  

In addition to improving weather forecasts, officials said they intended to use the supercomputer for other uses. These include climate predictions, energy planning, and corruption prevention.

The push by Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, for a new public supercomputer comes as private companies around the world continue their race for technological supremacy. In many instances, governments have chosen to use technology developed in the private sector rather than developing their own. 

Both approaches have their pros and cons. For example, in the United States, the military and artificial intelligence company Anthropic have recently been at odds over how Anthropic will allow its AI chatbot, Claude, to be used. 

In that case, the involvement of a private company provided additional guardrails against the U.S. government potentially using powerful, new technology in ways that could be illegal, ill-advised, or dangerous. 

Still, the spat between the Pentagon and Anthropic provided an opening for competitors such as xAI, which has lobbied for the U.S. military to adopt its own technology. 

The Mexican government's push to improve weather forecasting also reflects the growing importance of developing more accurate early warning systems.

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In recent years, all manner of extreme weather events, from hurricanes to heat waves, have become more severe and more destructive.

Early warning systems are essential to providing those likely to be impacted with an opportunity to prepare in hopes of mitigating the negative impacts.

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