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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 ?
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'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.
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
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!).
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.
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
Don't frustrate yourself! Don't worry about these folks!
Probably off topic but my daughter recently learned about how hurricanes form, and what powers them in school and was quite fascinated. My point is that the truth about our natural surroundings can be as interesting to those recently exposed to it (But I suppose it requires an open mind) as the fantasies concocted by the zealots!
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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 :-)
Sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don't... Sad really.
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!).
SimEarth.
Lucky Bastards.
This comment is akinned to those that people make who are convinced that Science (tm) has somehow disproven the existence of God, simply because we now have a better understanding of the physical mechanisms for certain phenomena that used to be explained by divine activity (a popular example is Zeus casting down lightning bolts). Whether or not individual lightning "bolts" (or hurricanes) have some divine purpose is not a question that we can answer by understanding atmospheric science. In a rough parallel, it might be asked, "Why did Phigrin type what he typed?" And in response someone will say, "Because the electrical/chemical impulses transmitted via his nervous system caused the muscles in his fingers to move in such and such a fashion." It's a valid answer, but says nothing about Phigrin's intents or motives.
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.
Well, it's not really so much of an urban legend, as a way of explaining chaos theory (thanks Jurassic Park). The idea is that, no matter how accurate your initial data are, there will still be some round-off errors (basically) in your numbers. When you do a lot of calculations on these data, small differences in the initial data manifest themselves as large-scale phenomena down the road. Hence, a butterfly's position now determines whether or not a hurricane occurs three weeks later.
Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums...
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.
small differences in the initial data manifest themselves as large-scale phenomena down the road.
A good point to emphasize when people are blindly clamoring for more computer power.
Lyapunov exponents for portions of phase space for a nonlinear system will cause this divergence.
So, yes, no matter how many bits of floating point mantissa you carry, or how precise your measure your initial conditions, exp(at) will inevitably grow if a > 0.
And, just in case anyone's proud of their accurate code and precise initial conditions, there's still Heisenberg to prevent you from measuring too much accurate information at the same time.
IIRC, someone once determined that a pencil, balanced on its point, would always fall within 22 seconds because of the inherent uncertainty in position and momentum that could be established initially.
"Provided by the management for your protection."