Centro de Previsão do Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC, Portuguese for ''Center for Weather Forecast and Climatic Studies'') is the

numerical weather prediction Numerical weather prediction (NWP) uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to weather forecasting, predict the weather based on current weather conditions. Though first attempted in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of comput ...

agency of

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

, part of INPE (

National Institute for Space Research The National Institute for Space Research (, INPE) is a research unit of the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (Brazil), Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations, the main goals of which are fostering scientific r ...

). Its mission is to provide Brazil with weather and climate forecasts. CPTEC is the most advanced center for numerical weather prediction and climate in

Latin America Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...

, providing forecasts for short and medium-term climate and high precision, since the beginning of 1995. CPTEC uses supercomputers and the knowledge of its staff to achieve the same level as forecasting centers in more developed countries. CPTEC receives information through the data network of the

World Meteorological Organization The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology an ...

and other national networks, in addition to the Brazilian satellite ( SCD-1). In addition to the

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study the magnetosphere * Asteroid cluster, a small ...

manufactured by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

, with a processing capacity of 5.7 trillion operations per second, it enables simulation with numerical models of

weather Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloud cover, cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmo ...

and

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteoro ...

, integrating atmospheric and oceanic information. In activity until 2009, in 2010 a Cray XE6 supercomputer (31,104

core Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (laboratory), a highly specialized shared research resource * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber ...

s) was purchased from Cray Inc. with a performance of 214.2 TFLOP/s, dubbed "Tupã".

References

External links

CPTEC site
(In Portuguese)
Weather forecast for all Brazil, up to 30 days in advance
(In Portuguese) Weather forecasting Governmental meteorological agencies in South America Government agencies of Brazil {{brazil-org-stub