Number crunching at NOAA against hurricanesBoulder 12 June 2001 In the USA, the 2001 hurricane season has begun, and a recently installed 1,152 processor SGI Origin 3000 supercomputer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton (GFDL), is helping the USA to better prepare for storms, high winds and flooding.
With five to seven hurricanes expected this hurricane season, which runs
through Nov. 30, the ever-growing U.S. population in coastal areas is
vulnerable to storm surges from hurricanes and the dangers of inland flooding.
But, with the latest supercomputing technology from SGI, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is developing more accurate hurricane
forecasts to prevent the loss of life and to minimize property damage.
A 1,152-processor SGI Origin 3000 series supercomputer at GFDL is being
used full time to address some of the most difficult but critical obstacles to
developing new and more realistic models for predicting climate variability,
detecting climate change and forecasting hurricanes. The massive computer
system is being used to improve the accuracy and timeliness of NOAA's
short-term weather warnings, seasonal forecasts and regional and global
climate predictions.
In late September 2000, NOAA awarded the Raytheon Company of Garland,
Texas, a four-year, $34 million base contract to build the high-performance
computing system. The total value of the contract, inclusive of all options,
is approximately $67 million. Raytheon selected the SGI Origin 3000 series and
its breakthrough NUMAflex modular concept to upgrade GFDL's supercomputing
capabilities.
Eight 128-processor SGI Origin 3800 systems form a large-scale
cluster and two 64-processor SGI Origin 3800 systems serve as an analysis
cluster. The smaller analysis cluster serves GFDL's data archive that is
stored in three robotic tape libraries and is expected to reach 2PB in size by
September 2003.
GFDL is a federal research laboratory in the Office of Oceanic and
Atmospheric Research, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce's NOAA. The
laboratory performs comprehensive, long-lead-time research that is fundamental
to the mission of NOAA.
Today's premier weather forecasting center, the European Center for Medium
Range Forecasting, used GFDL models to get started. The technology required to
make the successful El Nino forecasts at the National Centers for
Environmental Prediction, in the National Weather Service, was developed at
GFDL. The current operational hurricane forecast model used by both the
National Weather Service and the U.S. Navy was developed at GFDL.
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