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Earth Simulator Now Predicting Hurricanes?
GeoGreg writes "The BBC is reporting that the Japanese Earth Simulator supercomputer is producing results showing that it is possible to model climate down to the level of severe weather events such as hurricanes. This computer has been discussed on Slashdot previously, and it sounds like at least some of the hype around this beastie was justified."
Can It predict where to put the butterfly to stop them ?
Does this shoot the whole "butterfly in the rainforest" theory to hell, or does the simulator monitor butterfly activity?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
the Japanese Earth Simulator supercomputer is producing results showing that it is possible to model climate down to the level of severe weather events
Sure, you can model it, but how accurate is the model? I can model a cow as a sphere, but I haven't told you if that is appropriate for what I need.
I dunno about forecasts. But if they hooked up a couple of them in the same country it'd probably bring down the power grid :-}
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I'm still waiting for a supercomputer that can create hurricanes. Who cares about predicting them when you can't do anything to stop them? I envision a future where we stop hurricanes by throwing other hurricanes at them, and nations conduct large scale wars by throwing hurricanes at each other.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Wow, I'm surprised that a resolution of 10 cubic kilometers is enough to actually make any predictions besides the most general of weather trends.
Think of the variation between the state of air at sea level and then at the ceiling of a 10km cell... that's some severe approximation.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
The conclusion was basically that Japan would be f***'ed if such was to happen, but that's rant for another day.
So, earthsimulator simulates a lot of things. I am surprised that they don't model nuclear blasts on them, because it certainly CAN. Or at least we just don't know about it.
One thing is for sure, though - I will attest that NEC definitely made a bundle over this =)
btw, for ppl who are in japan, you can schedule tours to the place. I havn't tried yet, but in case anyone is interested... (now that I think about it, wasn't there a story about this a while back?) but here is a link just for fun: visitor information.
and if you are brave enough for the same page in japanese, click here. (The japanese page has a japanese map, which shows station names in kanji. I always found kanji station names to be more help, but that might be just me...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Remember this article? Yeah, I know, completely different technologies, but it seems like after decades of mediocre weather forecasting the technology is suddenly jumping forward all at once.
I'll be able to choose between skirts or pants more precisely!
I wonder if the system releases only one pattern that the weather will follow or if it returns many different ways that the weather could go. From what I've heard previously about hurricanes, they have the tendancy to change paths when they feel like it - would the machine give more than just one pattern that the hurricane could take or do you think that it gives what it has discovered is the best answer?
bwah-ha-ha-ha
Model the destruction to the USA east coast that WILL happen when a large chunk of the Canaries falls into the sea, ( estimated to be sometime in the next few centuries ) now if the EU really wanted to 'influence' US policy a few studies like these, plus a bit of mining might do it ..... conspiracy theorists take note!
As mentioned before, there is a distributed project called climateprediction.net
for those who want to participate themselves. It is run by the University of Oxford in the UK, it is not affiliated with . So far only a windows client, but a Linux one is in the works. It is very CPU intensive, so if you have less than an 800mhz processor you shouldn't bother, it would take months to finish a single unit of work.
Hey, do you find it suprising that the nation that knows the least about climate science is the one that is most skeptical about global warming?
"In little more than a decade, the United States has fallen significantly behind other countries in its ability to simulate and predict long-term shifts in climate, according to a wide range of scientists and recent federal studies."
"During the Clinton administration, the lack of American modeling leadership did not have a discernible impact on climate policy, various experts said. But it did prevent the United States from playing a more central role in writing critical sections of the Intergovernmental Panel's report -- particularly the part assessing the extent of human influence on the warming trend of recent decades.
In computing power, Dr. Sarachik said, "our top two centers together don't amount to one-fifth of the European effort."
In that article from the New York Times is from two years ago! It mentions the japanese plans to build the Earth Simulator.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
include itself in the model?
Surely the heat generated by the system will disrupt the real world much more than the butterfly which'll make the model useless unless it includes itself in the model.
Heh circular reasoning until you disappear up your own fundament!
I think it should be noted that the article says they can only predict the likelyhood of hurricains occuring, rather than actual individual instances of hurricains as that title of this story implys..... We wont be able to fast forward the model, and predict a hurricaine years before it comes along for instance.... (Somthing to do with Chaos theory ends all hope of this ever happening..... You'd have to predict a leaf falling someplace else first!).
I just had to say it...
Merlin --- We're an autonomous collective... Help, Help, I'm being oppressed!!
While it is nice to know the computing power is out there, people need to realize that the prediction is only as good as the software the scientist. There are a lot of things that go into the weather. I question if we have caputred data on enough of them to really start making such long term predictions. I am curious if they have actually been able to modle past weather based upon the data they would have had avalable. Predicting the weather for what happened a year ago would be a neat trick, but only if you don't cheat and use more data then what would have been avalable if one had done it for real.
Well now that we might be predicting when and where hurricanes will occur, do you think it may convince religious zealots that hurricanes are just part of life? Or do we have to make peace that some people still think an eclipse is the work of the supernatural and that some of us always like to read our horoscopes?
Well I, for one, would welcome some grammar nazi overlords, just to deal with a certain person's posts.
Eventually this supercomputer will be able to model climate down to the level of 42.
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
I had no idea how much more powerful NEC's EarthSim was than the the "next best thing" was, as far as supercomputers go, but check Top500.org's current list (to be updated in November) out: NEC ES runs, at max, almost three times (!) the G-flops as the next runner-up. I always figured the supercomputer races would be like Cedar Pointe and their roller coasters... you know, somebody builds a bigger or faster one, so you build another that edges them out by just enough to reclaim the title. I had no idea NEC decided to take the "largest computational genitals, period" crown with such authority.
"They show that, for the first time, our climate models can be run at resolutions capable of ...
I have always heard that the flapping of a butterfly here can cause a storm in China ....
Just wondering whether someday the resolution will be so good that out of the millions of butterflies flapping, they will be able to track down that culprit whose flapping caused the storm in china ...
because if they can do it, you won't find me posting to slashdot, but on the run trying to kill that damn butterfly before I am blamed for it all ... The TIA and CAPPS goons shoot horses, don't they ... or is it people that they shoot ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
I think you mean they can predict 'typhoons'. Japanese don't care about hurricanes. If anything they want the US to have more of them so that Japan looks good.
Which means the US TV broadcast media, craving the eyeballs of weather-obsessed seniors, will have more time to hype storms. Blah.
I can get back to you on that grammar nazi thing once I actually wake up; my alarm just went off about 10 minutes ago. But, I see what you mean :-)
Oh, wait, it seems we need the supercomputer to work out where to put the butterfly.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don't... Sad really.
What a beowolf cluster of those could do...
Should I be worried that this thought actually turns me on a bit?!
Hell, yes! AHHHHH *runs out in shock and terror*
The article contains a photo of a train with the caption: Fewer tracks may buckle in heatwaves
The recent track buckling problem in the UK was caused by the use of cheap lightweight tracks (which is why our European neighbours were unaffected). I have to wonder though how the author of this article reaches the conclusion that simulating climate models will actually lead to less track buckling. It was already known that the tracks would buckle occaisionally, but those in charge of the railways planned for drivers to slow down and try to see buckled lines ahead (as if derailing at 60mph is acceptable!).
"But Earth IS a sim" jokes ;).
. ~/.sig
SimEarth.
Lucky Bastards.
BUT... Can it model potential intensity? NOAA and NWS have been able (as proven by Isabel) to give 5 day advance warning of where the storms are actually going to hit. No, it is not dumb luck. The trick is to figure out how strong the storm is going to be upon landfall, which allows goverments, NGOs and the general population to make proper decisions with regard to evacuation and appropriate response. They can't do this yet.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Actually, you know, the Earth Simulator has its own power plant, so, theoretically, a cluster of Earth Simulators would each possess their own power plants, so they'd leave the power grid of the host country unaffected.
Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums...
Of course, those predictions you sell for quite a pretty penny. And some poor fool happens to get the card that predicts all four races, and thinks "these guys know their stuff..."
Crooks can make a bit of money that way. Marks can lose quite a bit more than a bit that way, too.
Anyhow, I like the fact that this Japanese computer is usuing a deterministic forecast. I don't put a lot of faith in (for example, the British distributed modeling) the methods that forecast every possible outcome.
Disclaimer: I do not advocate that anyone should behave like a crook. Please do not try to steal other peoples' money, just because they have a gambling addiction. Sure, someone's going to steal it -- but their blood doesn't have to be on your soul.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I live in Southern Mexico on the coast. About 5 years ago Hurrican Mitch, a category 5 hurricane, was sitting out at sea not too far away. For nearly a week it hardly moved, just hanging out in the middle of the ocean building up strength. The whole time, the NOAA/NHC was predicting it would hit us dead on in 3 days. Yet the hurricane just stayed there.
Suddenly, the hurricane turned south and hit Honduras. Where it again stalled and hung out for 3 days. In the end, about 11,000 Hondurans died, primarily from massive mudslides that consumed enitre villages.
I really hope they improve the models significantly so that things like this don't have to happen. If hurricanes could be predicted with more accuracy, to the point that people and countries could trust the predictions, these areas could be evacuated.
Unfortunately, with the level of accuracy, there's such a wide area in the predicted path that it's impossible to evacuate everyone that could potentially be in the path in time to save them.
When I first moved down here, I though, "Gee, I'd like to see what a hurricane is like." Then Mitch showed up. When you have a category 5 hurricane on your doorstep, you start to re-evaluate your life a bit. The town I live in would have been leveled. I would have been one of the lucky ones. I had a car and would have simply driven inland to avoid it. A lot of people couldn't have afforded to do that.
With more accurate predictions, the government could sponsor the evacuations and save a lot of lives.
public Weather checkWeather(String args[]) { ...
if (wind > 100mph) {
Hurricane hurricane = new Hurricane(Jane);
actualWeather = new Weather(hurricane);
} else {
actualWeather = new Weather(sunshine);
}
return actualWeather;
}
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Yeah? Well, I wonder what a wankel engine in one of those could do...
Stick Men
This computer is being used to model climate, not weather. Weather is localised changes, climate is global changes.
Oh, cookies! I am the Cookie Monster...
My mom assures me that the cookies will not burn.
I can ensure the cookies will not burn by checking them every couple minutes.
Those are good. Here's a better one for insure
My cookies are insured against burning: if they are burned, mom promises to give me $5.00 so I can buy some instead.
An important difference between insure and the other two is that when something is insured, there is no guarantee that it will work; there is instead a promise that if it fails some kind of compensation will be provided at some future date. It is significant that the compensation is not necessarily in kind and does not necessarily have the same value as the original.
In my own life, I find I often want to verify that the art supply expert is ensuring that the blue pigment will not turn green in sunlight and that he is not just insuring that I can get my money back if my painting ends up ruined.
no no no, they are trying to answer the question of what happened if all the chinese ppl jumped all at once.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
ok. i have no life: but here is a quick calculation:
1.2billion people
avg 70kg
jump 20cm
E = gmh = 9.81 m/s^2 * 0.2 m * 70 kg * 1.2E9
= 164.81GJ
This is compared to a megaton yield, which is
2,977,789,639,020,840Joules (i.e. 2977.8GJ).
In another words, the said scenario would cause an energy roughly equivalent of about 55 kilotons spreadout through China; as a comparison, LittleBoy was like 13.4 kilotons.
So, I guess if they brought everybody to the same city and jumped a few times, it might be kinda imposing...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
This is a good way to do extended-range forecasts.
Suppose you run an ensemble and discover that a tiny change in inputs causes a big change in outputs. Then you know that you're on a cusp, and the uncertainties in your input data will probably make your forecast diverge from the actual weather.
Other times you'll discover that all the outputs are pretty similar. Then you know that you're in a stable and predictable part of the state space. Then you can publish an extreme long range forecast without worrying that some butterfly will make a liar out of you.
Is the answer 42? (Remember Deep Thought?)
--
nosig
Yes, the first application of technology is often to wage war.
Peacetime use of hurricane control might be to keep the hurricanes over the oceans, without disrupting the overall thermal equilibrium of the planet.
Being able to measure and predict is the first step to being able to influence nature in planned ways.
The article quoted from was in the New York Times originally, wasn't it?
I don't gather how you can say that America know the LEAST about climate science because the EU/Japn have fast computers.
Hey, here's an idea for anonymous cowards everywhere -- If you actually read the article, all the way through, you might not have to post anonymously. Then you might see exactly what the article says about the US's ability to predict long-term climate, see, instead of just responding to one paragraph out of context. Zoinks, wouldn't that be informative?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
So in "little more than a decade" we've fallen behind someone in ways that can only really be proven by data from a longitudinal study over many years? I'm not sure how we can be sure of that; we'd need more than a decade to compare long-term predictions to the results, right?
(I "get" where you're going, and it's an interesting point: Is our largely politicized skepticism about global warming change preventing us from investing in climate research? Basically I'm in sympathy with that question being asked, at least. But the data's still out on the actual results, isn't it?)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Here is a great page explaining chaos theroy. My favortie part is this:
Butterfly (A) flaps wings (B), distracting archer (C) who misses target (D) and shoots bull (E) who charges through fence (F) striking automobile (G) of Ambassador from Zukistan (backward nation with 1/7 of world's nuclear weapons), causing rear-view mirror (H) to break, giving Zukistan (I) seven years bad luck (J). Zukistan blames the USA (K), and declares war (L). Massive thermonuclear exchange (M) destroys civilization (N) and causes nuclear winter (O).
We also have the inverse butterfly effect: Nuclear winter (O) kills butterfly (A).
Also (back on topic) the page explains why the weather is so difficult to predict.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Well, last season was a disaster...
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
had a weather simulator predicting huge storms,
but then they discovered that even with the wrong data, the 'predictions' still happened!
I think the U.N. has a whole section of laws governing the Use and Non-use of Weather based weapons...
Thanks to the Orthopaedic surgeon I can more acurately predict bad weather anywhere on the planet. I don't need a team of engineers to maintain me, just some beer and well... lets just leave the rest to your imagination.
The article misleads the reader into thinking that the computer will be able to predict hurricanes. If you read closely, you will see that the scientist say it will be able to predict whether hurricanes will increase in frequency in the future. And it doesn't even do that, yet! More hype...
Currently hooked on AMP
Try telling that to Microsoft, whose mascot for its MSN online service is a butterfly.
Will I retire or break 10K?
We are living in a universe where an approximate ultimate question has been discovered: "What is a good attitude toward life?" with answer "for-tea-two," that is, "tea for two."
Whether this hypothesis will affect weather patterns is still up in the air.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The primary difference is in the root of the prefixes. 'E-' is from Latin 'ex', meaning 'out of'. 'A-' is from Latin 'ad' which means 'towards'.
'Affect' means you perform an action 'at' or 'towards' something that already exists. 'Effect' means 'to bring about' (you make something 'out' of thin air).
If you want something to happen, you 'ensure' it by doing something to bring it 'about'. If you want to give enhancement 'to' something that already exists, you 'assure' it.
This is pure speculation, but probably at some point, 'insure' was taken to mean the same as 'assure' in the same way that 'affect' generally has the same connotation as 'infect'.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Biting Insect Genocide! We'll sell the B.I.G. plan to congress by offering to eliminate certain photos...
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.