Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Supercomputing Upgrade Produces High-Resolution Storm Forecasts

Posted by samzenpus on from the clearer-pictures dept.

dcblogs writes A supercomputer upgrade is paying off for the U.S. National Weather Service, with new high-resolution models that will offer better insight into severe weather. This improvement in modeling detail is a result of a supercomputer upgrade. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the weather service, put into production two new IBM supercomputers, each 213 teraflops, running Linux on Intel processors. These systems replaced 74-teraflop, four-year old systems. More computing power means systems can run more mathematics, and increase the resolution or detail on the maps from 8 miles to 2 miles.

3 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Have the solutions converged? by RichMan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was at a supercomputing conference back in the 90's. There were wonderful reports on doubling the resolution of the grid and so on. Advances in the scale are all good.

    The questions are
    a) with the increase in detail of the simulations have we converged on a solution. That is do solutions at scale N and 10N match. If they do then the resolution and model are aligned for accuracy in the solution.
    b) do the simulations agree with reality.

    If a) and not b) then there is something wrong with the model that is not related to compute power or problem resolution, and no amount of compute power will fix it.

    1. Re:Have the solutions converged? by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Interesting

      TFA ironically begins with the quote '"I don’t think we will ever have enough [computing power] to satisfy us,” says researcher.'

      The summary is vague, and the article not much better, and neither say anything about whether the 'new model' is matching observations any better than the old.

      It would be nice if they could at least clarify if the sole pair of comparison images are even the same forecast, because the new model shows not only more detail but a completely different prediction.

      Come on kids, this isn't a network news sound bite. This is the Internet, and you're a tech news site. Would it kill you to go past the press release?

      Maybe I'm just bitter about this because I live in mountains where a coin is a more accurate forecasting tool than the weather service.

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
  2. And as the resolution increases ... by Thorfinn.au · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Better resolution is good, but with each improvement in the system, the input data also needs to be improved and remeasured.
    Ultimately the ground features need to be modelled in greater detail to match the increased resolution of the grid.
    Which comes own to knowing where each tree/building and similar sized static feature is and how this affects the model.
    However, as the grid increases it should not need to know where the butterflies are .