Supercomputers Race to Predict Storms

pillageplunder writes "CNN has an interesting article on how different supercomputers from around the world are working to predict large storms tracks. The 3 days it takes now has been cut in half. Cool read."

Comments

More details on Fleet Numerical's iron

[green pizza]

http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_rel eases/2004/june/fleet_numerical.html

NOAA

[garretwp]

I currently work for NOAA at a facility called GFDL. We house some of the super computers here. I currently operate and control the computers and its deffinitly a treat to be able to work with these fast machines. We have some of the worlds fastest computers here and they compete very well with the earth simulator. We also have some of the top hurricane guys working for us as well. It is good to see that the techonology that we use is getting publicity. It will inform everyone how things are done and where they get the information from.

Fortran, yay!

[green pizza]

You don't know too many scientists-turned-programmers do you? Fortran is still alive and well in scientific circles. Companies like IBM and SGI still write and optimize Fortran compilers for their newest CPUs. Even Intel recently released a major update to their P4 and Itanium2 Fortran compilers.

Relevant links from weather geek bookmarks

[Council]

You can see the current predictions by each model at any given time here:
http://www.weatherunderground.com/tropical/trackin g/at200406_model.html

The NHC discussion of the model guidance for each storm is here, under 'discussion' for each storm:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

They explain why they're agreeing with or discounting each model in their overall forecasts.

Generally, it's difficult to find much prediction of hurricane tracks that doesn't come somehow from the NHC. This isn't because there aren't independent analysists, but because they try not to send mixed signals, which might lead to people not evacuating when they should. The raw information from the computer models is the closest you get to dissenting opinions, afiak.

See the models

[theCoder]

As a resident of Florida (who's so far been pretty lucky with respect to the hurricanes), I've taken a keen interest in these models. The best place I've found to see them is at Weather Underground. Each listed storm has a "Computer Models" link at the end. See

Ivan
Jeanne.

Since the pages auto-refresh, I've just been leaving them up in a tab in Mozilla and checking them every once and a while. Though the models aren't always accurate and tend to change a lot, they kind of give you a feel for where the storm is probably going to go.