U.S. weather computers to get tenfold boost in forecast power
PHOENIX — The forecasting power of top U.S. weather supercomputers will leap tenfold this year thanks to a $45 million upgrade that should put it near the head of the class alongside the rival European system, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Monday.
"NOAA is making the next major investment in computing supercomputer," NOAA chief Katherine Sullivan, the agency's chief, told the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society.
The top U.S. computer model, the Global Forecast System (GFS) has been in a weather computing "arms race" of sorts with the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) model in recent years.
The stark difference in the two models was underscored most dramatically in 2012 when the GFS forecast showed powerful Hurricane Sandy spinning harmlessly out to sea while the European model -- correctly, as it turned out -- showed it making a direct hit on the East Coast.
These weather models take data from satellites, weather balloons and other observations and plug them into atmospheric physics equations in supercomputers that help make weather forecasts.
Sullivan said the upgrades "will significantly improve our ability to translate data into actionable information, which in turn will lead to more timely, accurate, and reliable forecasts."
U.S. computers, after the upgrade, will go from now being able to handle 426 trillion operations a second to 5,000 trillion calculations in the fall.
"By increasing our overall capacity, we'll be able to process quadrillions of calculations per second that all feed into our forecasts and predictions," said Louis Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service in a press release. "This boost in processing power is essential as we work to improve our numerical prediction models for more accurate and consistent forecasts."
Even without the upgrade, preliminary data shows U.S. computer models beat the European forecasts in 2014, according to NOAA spokesman Chris Vaccaro.
"This announcement is a giant step towards rendering the 'who's better, the Europeans or U.S.' obsolete," said J. Marshall Shepherd, a University of Georgia meteorology professor and former president of the American Meteorological Society. "U.S. (computer) modeling has always been world class, but this puts us near the top of the class," he said.
Cray will be the subcontractor for IBM to support these computer upgrades, which will cost $44.5 million. Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray said the upgrade will mean "weather forecasts with greater details and precision.
Contributing: The Associated Press