National Weather Service triples computing power
Friday, February 11th, 2005This week NOAA’s new high-performance computers became fully operational.
There are three separate systems, all IBM-manufactured: the primary system (Blue) and backup system (White) provide uninterrupted weather and climate forecast services, while the research and development system (Red) is used to integrate new new research results into the operational models and provides for a more rapid improvement of all forecast products delivered to the public and private sectors.
According to Brig. Gen. David L. Johnson, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), director of the NOAA National Weather Service, the NWS is going “from making 450 billion calculations per second to 1.3 trillion calculations per second,” making it possible to continually increase forecast accuracy and run increasingly sophisticated, high-resolution severe- and extreme-weather predictor models.
