Supercomputer Quietly Puts U.S. Weather Resources Back On Top

RESTON, Va. — In a nondescript office building here, one of the world’s most powerful weather supercomputers quietly hums on a 24/7 mission to analyze billions of pieces of data that ultimately will tell you whether you need a sweater or sunscreen when you leave the house.

Forecasts, critical not only for your wardrobe choices but for ship captains, airline pilots and shipping companies, depend on sophisticated data crunching and computer models, but three years ago European models delivered a blow to the U.S. weather apparatus. The European weather models accurately predicted the path and strength of the devastating Hurricane Sandy that hit the New Jersey coastline and caused $65 billion in damage.

Now, the U.S. is on the rebound with this monumental supercomputer that collects, processes and analyzes billions of observations from weather satellites, weather balloons, airplanes, buoys and surface stations from around the world to help meteorologists make better weather forecasts.

The brand-new Cray supercomputer — designed, owned and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — processes 3 quadrillion calculations per second. If that sounds like a lot, it is — you'd need about 12,500 high-end laptops to get close to that kind of power. Still, the supercomputer is merely the 18th fastest in the U.S. and 42nd fastest in the world, Michaud said.

NOAA's purchase of the school-bus size device stemmed partly from competition from the top European weather model — better known in some circles by its acronym ECMWF (European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting). It predicted Sandy's now infamous and unusual left hook in 2012 days before the top American model — the GFS (Global Forecast System).

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2016/02/22/supercomputer-reston-noaa-cray-ibm/80290546/