Earth Simulator Sees Green Light

burbs writes "Big Blue's dominator is getting closer to being turned on. The Earth Simulator in Japan is, supposedly, the world's fastest parallel-processing supercomputer. Designed for the Earth's weather, the computer should be able to predict climate for the entire planet for thousands of years in a short amount of time."

Comments

Simulate wheather for thousands of years?

[Saib0t]

I don't know much about meteorology, but isn't predicting the wheather a tad difficult?
Besides, to be able to precisely model the earth's climate, they would need to have measures for about every (mathematical) point of the earth at a given time, which is not possible... Unless they go for an approximation, and then chaos theory kicks in and their 'thousands of years in advance' prediction is worth nothing. (the butterfly - hurricane thing anyone?)

Am I missing something there?

Re:Simulate wheather for thousands of years?

[khym]

Even if the computer did know the exact state of every single atmospheric molecule on the planet, things like metiorites, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions would changes things around, at least by a tiny bit, and then the Butterfly Effect comes back. So a 1,000 prediction is pretty ify.

Re:Simulate wheather for thousands of years?

[jtdubs]

The best part about weather forcasting isn't even Chaos theory. I mean, yes, there are infinite variables which are immeasurable to the needed accuracy (infinite) but, even better yet, due to Quantum theory, a lot of these variables are probably truly random.

No matter how powerful the computer, specific whether conditions will NEVER be able to be scientifically computed.

Justin Dubs

Re:Simulate wheather for thousands of years?

[Zocalo]

You beat me to it on the butterfly effect, but what the article is unclear on is what they expect to predict for 1,000 years hence. I doubt they are expecting miracles like "It's going to rain in Spain on 20th Sept. 3001", but rather stuff like "average rainfall globallaly will be up by 3001".

Maybe. If that damn butterfly doesn't fart or something.

I speak of the computer which is to come after me

[Simon Brooke]

Douglas Adams predicted this, didn't he?

...and you shall call it 'The Earth'

weather outlook: long cold, dark spells.

[zardor]

Its easy to predict the weather from this: since it has so much processing power, once they turn it on, it will become self aware, declare war on all mankind, and launch the all missiles, thereby plunging the world into a nuclear winter that will last a 1000 years.

Do they model supercomputer effects on the Earth?

[Shivetya]

Seems that if each one of these wonders requires a "city-scale" power generation plant that they would have to model themselves into the equation too.

Result: Global Warming is indeed occuring, but apparently it is mainly IBM's fault.

Climate, not weather

[cperciva]

A number of posters are confusing climate modelling with weather prediction. Weather prediction -- working out if it will rain tomorrow -- is very difficult because weather systems are chaotic. Climate prediction, however -- working out how large an effect increased CO2 emmisions will have on global warming -- is easy by comparison... at least in theory.

The problem with climate modelling is that the models right now incorporate large numbers of "fudge factors", and by setting those appropriately you can get whatever outcome you want from your modelling. Of course, without those fudge factors the Earth would be somewhere around -40C most of the time, so you can't just throw them out.

In short, good models exist for weather, but weather is chaotic so you can't predict much anyway. Bad models exist for climate, but at least it isn't chaotic (as far as we know).

Re:Climate, not weather

[Kynde]

A number of posters are confusing climate modelling with weather prediction. Weather prediction -- working out if it will rain tomorrow -- is very difficult because weather systems are chaotic. Climate prediction, however -- working out how large an effect increased CO2 emmisions will have on global warming -- is easy by comparison... at least in theory.

A number of meteorologists are also confusing modelling with scientific modelling. Those larger scale climate models have little chance giving accurate predictions since there's absolutely no reason to assume that such models would not depend chaotically on the underlying small scale weather. Those forementioned fudge factors that climate models are plagued with are manifestation of just that.

Even in more strict science circles people tend to resort to finding trends when the system vanishes out of scope. It's essential that the causality and predictability are present. Otherwise people wind up doing research based crap correlations. For example, for several years there's been really strong correlation between the number of Babtist preachers and number of people arrested for drinking in public. There's jack causality present as the dominant effect is the fluctuations in the population of US.

Just because climate is a lot slower than weather allowing it to predicted for longer periods of time than weather and short term trends give reasonable short term predictions, just as it's possible for weather for a couple of days at a time, it's still chaotic.

It's easy to blow the model out of practicality and show how shitload of CO2 emissions will create greenhouse effect. A lot shittier task is to work with real world figures and again work with a chaotic system. Don't get me wrong though, I'm absolutely all for the Co2 emission regulations and all.

Re:Climate, not weather

[Rogerborg]

• Climate prediction, however -- working out how large an effect increased CO2 emmisions will have on global warming -- is easy by comparison... at least in theory

Theory indeed.

• IMB: We've predicted the climate for the next 1000 years!
• Press: Assuming that major vulcanism or meteor impacts don't screw it up, right?
• IBM: Oh, well, sure, assuming that doesn't happen.
• Press: And the chances of that are...?
• IBM: Uhh... about.. ummm... look! Flashing lights! Just like on Star Trek!
• Press: Oooh! Pretty!

Re:Climate, not weather

[aozilla]

This is a necessary condition, but it is certainly not sufficient. It's quite easy to interpolate a set of points from past data and create a curve which fits them all exactly.

Re:Climate, not weather

[gorgon]

Your reference seems to be from a crackpot. He uses a lot of nice sounding words, but the overall pictures he tries to paint is inconsistent. This David Allan has these great theories, including a "Unified Field Theory", that purport to explain everything, yet his theory seems to be limited cartoon explanations involving new forces. Plus the only references the guy seems to have are to his own papers, and he only has papers in conference proceedings, not refereed journals.

Anyway, I agree that solar input has to be included in climate models, and I'm pretty sure it is. The problem is our understanding of the long term cycle of the Sun still is uncertain as well. As for nuclear testing affecting other things, its possible that nuclear testing has some small effects on the climate, but I can imagine how it could effect the Sun and solar flares. I find that unlikely to the extreme. Its seems like someone probably found some small degree of corellation between nuclear testing and solar flares, and then said that this corellation implied causation. Not a very convincing argument, to say the least.

Re:Climate, not weather

[dublin]

Of course, without those fudge factors the Earth would be somewhere around -40C most of the time, so you can't just throw them out.

I'm sure you must have meant -40F not -40C, right? :-)

Real engineers don't use the metric system! (For those of you that are only CS geeks, -40F and -40C are the same...)

Re:1000 years weather?

[cperciva]

Please READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE COMMENTING!

As /. demonstrates so aptly, news media are not always accurate. Sadly, even "quotes" are often either taken out of context or simply plain wrong. I myself have been quoted as saying numerous things which I have not said, and never would say.

I expect the earlier poster did, in fact, read the article, but was knowledgeable enough to realize that the article got details wrong.

IBM's dominator

[orangesquid]

"Big Blue's dominator is getting closer to being turned on."

Ooh, can I do it? I like to turn on dominators!

Sticks and stones may break my bones
But whips and chains excite me.

Re:Great news!

[Lerc]

It's because they are using new superconducting processing elements that contain electrons with an equal probability of being in any particular position of the superconducter. As other elements pull these electrons off the probability wave collapses and the absence of the electron can be detected on the other side of the superconductor sooner than it would have taken light to travel this far. With this resulting Faster than light communication goes the associated backward time effects. This means the signals are processed for the proceeding operations first. As a result the first visible operation performed is the output.

There have been notable technical difficulties in getting the system up and running, not least of which involves convincing the engineers that they have to connect more than just the monitor up to make it work even though the results are already being displayed. They just don't get this destiny thing.

Not so fast..

[xtal]

People automatically assume a warmer climate is bad, something that can't exactly be claimed given we have no good scientific model for weather and climate modelling. Not enough understanding exists, and by some theories which are quite compelling (for example, read the book 'Chaos'), it may never be possible to predict the weather.

Now, a warmer climate might be bad for a specific area or populace. Islands will probably dissapear as oceans rise, and coastal areas will be changed. There's more evidence that some areas might become wetter and better for agricultural production; that some marginal farmland might produce much higher yields, and that previously inhospitable areas in northern climates might become much more temperate. Of course, by the same blade, storms will possibly be more frequent and of higher magnitude.

We just don't know. Global temperature change is an inevitable result of modern civilization. It's entirely possible that we're headed for huge disasters as a result of the dominance of man, and there's nothing "wrong" about that. We just need to develop technologies that prolong our stay here as long as possible until we can do something else. There -are- 6 billion people here, and most models project it stabilizing at around 12-20 billion. That's also a lot of minds working on the problem.

Re:Not so fast..

[xtal]

If you live in a desert, poor, miserable area (like, oh, say, afganistan) which might benefit from increased rainfall and crop production, you might think that OUTLOOK_QUITE_GOOD.

Re:1000 years weather?

[anshil]

Man, some moderators can be soooo nerving, how can something be 'overrated' if it has never been rated before? Huh? Remember some post starting with +2 :/

Confusion

[C_James_B]

As my Geography teacher never tired of telling us, climate != weather.
Climate is big and long-term. Weather is here and now. Not even the people who built that machine think it can predict world weather for one thousand years. There's just been a bit of a misunderstanding.

The Matrix

[BubbaFett]

Hey. Wasn't The Matrix an earth simulator? Should we be worried?

nonlinear equations

[xeeno]

I dunno about this one. Wouldn't you be solving some pretty harsh nonlinear d.e's in order to model weather correctly? AFIAK, the only real way to solve these things is to make assumptions about the boundary conditions and the parameters in the equations that simplify the equation in such a way as to make it solvable by means we do know. Not only that, you have mixed fluid equations - one equation for each type of particle in the atmosphere. You'll have boundary conditions on each layer of the atmosphere, and where things behave like plasmas you'll have an entirely new set of equations to consider. It sounds like there are way, way, way to many considerations that go into an exact solution of an atmospheric model. So, solving a 1000 years in advance seems ridiculous. I'd be happy if we could solve a day in advance!

Re:Butterfly bah

[anshil]

Exactly you can predict climate, but not wheater, what's is wheater but actually the spike periods?

Re:I'm curious...

[mrdisco99]

No, they're 4 per rack cabinet with 16 processors each. ASCI White has 128 node cabinets for a total of 512 nodes and 8,192 375MHz POWER3 processors.

Re:1000 years weather?

[JediTrainer]

The puff a butterfly makes during flight will alter local weather a little, and this change will continue to influence in weather mechanics, until some months later this butterfly can originate an tornade on another continent.

If that's what a butterfly can do, I shudder at what might happen in Europe the next time I have a burrito for lunch!

I fart in your general direction! -Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Chaotic?

[Dwonis]

Chaotic? Oh come on. It's only fluid dynamics! ;-)

Re:Chaotic?

[Dwonis]

I was being sarcastic. That's why I wrote only in bold and wrote a winking smile ;-).

You could have saved money...

[decipher_saint]

By networking hundreds of old farmers together...

Man, I can tell today is going to be a long one...

how much heat...

[ocie]

does this thing give off? And does the climate model take this heat into account? And if this heat depends on the amount of computation done by the computer, you'd have to model that too. Ahh, my brain hurts.

To all who are spouting about chaos theory....

[mindstrm]

This isn't designed to predict the weather in Omaha next Tuesday... or tell you the weather in Texas 1000 years from now....

It's designed to analyze global climate change... which you CAN do, with a reasonable amount of accuracy.

Re:To all who are spouting about chaos theory....

[mindstrm]

Uhh.. hence the reason for building this thing.....
You can predict climate a change a lot more easily than you can predict the weather... thats' my point.

The question to Life, the Universe and Everything

[MagikSlinger]

Don't tell me I'm the only one who is reminded of Hitch-hiker's by the claim of a computer that can simulate the EARTH!!! :-)