Last time I did the math owning your own hardware was still significantly cheaper especially if you're an institution that already has some of the infrastructur

Last time I did the math owning your own hardware was still significantly cheaper especially if you're an institution that already has some of the infrastructure in place (and covered by overhead costs on grants). And this is weather simulation so stuff like network topology matters and they will be running their models as often as they can. The cloud wins for more elastic work loads and people without IT departments and server rooms.