“Virtual hurricanes have appeared in computer models of the Earth’s climate for the first time. The swirling storms are visible in the first results from the Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan - the world’s fastest supercomputer.

The results, being presented at a workshop in Cambridge, UK, on Wednesday, are “really quite staggering” says Julia Slingo, Director of the Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling at the University of Reading, UK.

Whereas most climate models divide the Earth into blocks measuring hundreds of kilometres across, the powerful Earth Simulator can run models with cells as small as 10 kilometres. This means that detailed features of the weather - such as tropical storms - can be included.

In one sequence from the model, says Slingo, “you can see a typhoon going up to Japan and it even has a little eye”.”