LAHORE: The US government’s weather forecast and climate monitoring agency launched the country’s newest supercomputers on Tuesday to improve forecasts and alerts for public safety and the national economy.
The new supercomputers, first announced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in February 2020, significantly increase the computing capacity, storage space, and connection speed of America’s Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System.
“More computer power will enable NOAA to give the public with more detailed weather forecasts further in advance,” said the agency’s administrator, Dr Rick Spinrad.
Increased computing and storage capacity will enable NOAA to deploy higher-resolution models to better capture small-scale features such as severe thunderstorms, more realistic model physics to better capture cloud and precipitation formation, and a larger number of individual climate models to better measurable model surety.
The twin Hewlett Packard Enterprise Cray supercomputers, dubbed Dogwood and Cactus, run at a speed of 12.1 petaflops, which is three times faster than NOAA’s previous system.
