Faster, Better Forecasts Coming...01/19/00

(MSNBC) The National Weather Service has invested in one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, a move that will allow far more sophisticated forecasting. “It’s like going from a 286 processor to a new laptop,” said Louis Uccellini, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

IT’S UCCELLINI’S CENTER that uses the new 786 processor IBM SP computer, located in Bowie, Md. Five times faster than the Cray C-90 it replaces, the new IBM can make 690 billion calculations per second. By September, it will be making 2.5 trillion calculations per second, making it one of the two fastest weather computers in the world. The other one is at the European Center for Medium Range Forecasting in Bracknell, England. “We’ve been essentially standing still for a year and a
half because the old computer had been filled up,” Uccellini told MSNBC.

The lack of space prevented the National Weather Service from using sophisticated weather models like one that promises a 30 percent improvement in tracking hurricanes.

Uccellini said the new hurricane model was able to predict that Hurricane Floyd would lose power before it approached the North Carolina coast last year. Unfortunately, that forecast couldn’t be made by the old computer, and state officials ordered massive evacuations that turned out to be unnecessary.

“This new supercomputer puts us closer to reaching our goal of becoming America’s no surprise weather service,” said Director John J. Kelly Jr. “On a daily basis, we should see a 10 percent improvement in predicting temperatures, humidity and pinpointing when, where and how much rainfall will occur.”