With the ability to make 69.7 trillion calculations per second, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's new supercomputers are gearing up to
"improve forecast accuracy and extend watch and warning lead times for
severe weather, including hurricanes, tornadoes, air quality, wildfires, floods,
tsunamis and winter storms," the NOAA said in a statement Sept. 8. "The
new supercomputers, based on IBM Power 575 systems,
are four times faster than the previous NOAA system."
The supercomputers represent the final implementation of a nine-year, $180
million contract. The primary system is called Stratus, with a backup system
dubbed Cirrus.
"This new technology will provide us with more sophisticated models of the
Earth's land, ocean and atmosphere, giving meteorologists better accuracy and
precision in both long-term and short-term forecasting," Jack Hayes,
director of NOAA's National Weather Service, said in the statement.
According to the NOAA, "Higher computation speed allows meteorologists to
rapidly refine and update severe weather forecasts as dangerous weather
develops and threatens U.S.
communities. Billions of bytes of weather observations are fed into the system
each day, including temperature, wind, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, and
other oceanographic and satellite information taken from the ground, air, sea
and space."
"More accurate weather forecasts allow the National Weather Service to
warn individual citizens and whole communities about impending dangerous
weather well in advance so they can take action to protect lives and
property," Hayes said.
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