The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand has unveiled a new NZ$20 million (US$12.2m) supercomputer for climate and weather modeling.

Housed across two data centers in Auckland, the system is the fourth purchased by NIWA since 1999 and will be the fastest supercomputer owned by the science agency when it comes online.

Speaking at the unveiling, NIWA CEO John Morgan said: “The new computer will have 2.5 to 3 times more generational power than its predecessor, allowing for higher resolution, more frequent processing, and additional AI workloads.”

No information about the system’s compute power or when it will go live has been disclosed.

In addition to the new, as yet unnamed, system, NIWA is home to three other Cray high-performance computing (HPC) clusters.

In total, the supercomputers, named Maui, Mahuika, and Kupe, are capable of two thousand trillion calculations per second and offer a combined 14 petabytes of high-performance storage. Maui and Mahuika are housed at NIWA's Wellington Campus while Kupe is at the University of Auckland's Tamaki Data Centre.

“This is a substantial investment in New Zealand science which will benefit all New Zealanders and our friends throughout the Pacific Islands,” said Morgan. “With our nation increasingly disrupted by extreme weather events, NIWA’s new supercomputer will enable high-resolution weather and climate forecasting 24/7, using data from weather stations all around the world.”

Earlier this year, NIWA’s team of global climate modelers was made redundant after a drop in the agency’s revenue forced a restructure, resulting in the loss of around 90 jobs.

In comments to the New Zealand Herald, Morgan said that despite the job cuts, NIWA still has staff capable of running digital climate, earthquake, and freshwater modeling programs, noting that the agency had also recently invested in AI data specialists.