Leaders | A spell of sunshine

The world’s poor need to know about weather disasters ahead of time

Three things need to be done to make the most of meteorology’s potential

A woman sits on the front steps of her home, next to wreckage after a powerful storm in Barre, Vermont — Image: New York Times/Redux/Eyevine

Jul 27th 2023

MANIAC, a computer designed at Princeton after the second world war, could perform a blistering 10,000 calculations a second. This extraordinary power was applied to two main problems: modelling thermonuclear explosions and the Earth’s weather. They were the two most consequential applications the machine’s creators could imagine.

It would have taken MANIAC the entire 13.8bn-year history of the universe to perform as many calculations as today’s fastest computer can carry out in an hour. But though their abilities and ambit have increased, today’s supercomputers still see a great deal of their capacity devoted to weaponry and weather. Their contributions to H-bomb design add little to most everyday lives beyond an undercurrent of dread. But their work on the weather at forecasting outfits around the world finds practical application almost everywhere.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Sunny spells"