NOAA supercomputers to forecast better weather?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced this week that it has finally completed a nine-year, $180 million project aimed at installing new supercomputers to aid in more accurately predicting weather. The primary IBM supercomputer is now called Stratus. Its backup is dubbed Cirrus.
The new supercomputers, based on IBM Power 575 Systems, are capable of making 69.7 trillion calculations per second. According to NOAA, the faster the calculation speeds, the greater the chances that meteorologists can rapidly update severe weather forecasts as dangerous weather affects local communities. Billions of bytes are entered into the supercomputers each day to help predict the weather more accurately.
Just how important NOAA's new supercomputers are to our understanding and prediction of weather is easily understated.
Right now, Stratus contains about 20 weather models that predict worldwide weather accurately for about five days. A few decades ago, weather models could forecast weather accurately up to only about two days.
Those 20 weather models rarely change. They analyze conditions such as temperature, humidity, and precipitation to give organizations ranging from the National Weather Service to local meteorologists data on which they can base forecasts.
According to Ben Kyger, director of central operations for the National Center of Environmental Prediction, a division of NOAA, "We analyze weather conditions on grids we lay over maps of the world. In order for meteorologists to accurately predict a hurricane's path, for example, NOAA needs to pinpoint weather conditions in 1-kilometer grids of distance." Right now, those spans "are not even close to that."
How does it work?
In order to improve forecasting, a lot of work needs to be done. Right now, scientists from around the world are analyzing Stratus' weather models to find ways to improve them. When they think that they've come up with an improvement, NOAA analyzes the new models.
If it likes what it sees, NOAA takes it open source. It installs the new model on the Cirrus supercomputer to run in parallel with the approved model on Stratus. Scientists, weather experts, and even you and I can view the new model and inspect it for errors. Errors found are removed or tweaked. If no errors can be found, and the new data enhances weather forecasting, it will be put into operation and replace the existing model that it improved upon.
A look at NOAA's new IBM supercomputers.
(Credit: NOAA)In previous generations of weather forecasting, "most meteorologists looked at a single model and based an entire forecast off that," Kyger explained. "Today, with the help of Stratus and Cirrus, those same meteorologists can look at all 20 models, set them in motion, and see how long they all predict the same weather." This new technique is called Ensembling.
When the models are the same, the forecast is a practical guarantee. But when they start diverging (usually at around five days, according to Kyger), weather becomes more difficult to predict. There is far less certainty. Rain or snow forecasts are even more difficult, which is why sites like Accuweather.com or Weather.com feature percentage changes of precipitation. NOAA believes that thanks to the power and capacity of the new supercomputers, those forecasts will become more accurate over time.
Perhaps the most interesting tidbit about NOAA's new supercomputers is how they can change how we derive weather information from the Web. Kyger said weather forecasting and accuracy is an "evolutionary" process, so it might be difficult for Web surfers to see changes in how Web sites predict weather. But as Kyger pointed out, those changes will definitely be put into effect. And even if we don't notice them, the weather forecasts of sites such as Accuweather and WeatherBug are set to become more accurate.
Unfortunately, though, when it comes to weather predictions, real accuracy is a long way off. So be sure to take all those forecasts with a healthy helping of salt.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
The weather girl on the local college TV station used a Magic-8 Ball and got it right. A coin only gives you two choices.
Later she said the official forcast was not available, the report was live, and she had to come up with something. The station manager did not like it, but the viewers thought it was great. Always have a backup plan, always have alternatives, think outside the box, and so on.
By the way, she married my son.
What I think is needed is a national grid of automatic real-time weather observatories on a 1km grid to feed raw data into the supercomputers. We also need much more frequent upper air observations. Balloon borne radiosondes are launched every 12 hours at something like 50 locations in the US - that's a really course grid. Commercial aircraft also carry weather observing instrument packages which gives pretty good data near airports but the enroute portion of those flights are all at high altitude.
Until the data can be reliably obtained through remote sensing by satellite, the situation isn't going to get drastically better.
- by bruceslog September 11, 2009 6:08 AM PDT
- No Windows in the room, of course.
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(10 Comments)I think the older forecasters of yore that actually had a window to look out of were more accurate than these weathermen who are in a small room with a computer have been lately.
I recall days when, while watching the weatherman on TV say it was and will be a sunny day, while it was pouring down rain at my house. For Real ! All we can do is just sit and laugh about it.
Around here, the days forecast is completely wrong about half the time.
So yeah, flip a coin.
Maybe these new computers will just be faster at saying Let's call it a 50% chance or rain. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't.
By the way, NOAA, about this new rule where you set off the Tornado sirens if a thunderstorm crosses into our county while a tornado WATCH exists ?, it sucks !
Damn things go off damn near all summer long now. Haven't even had One tornado in our county this year.
You're making people learn to ignore the Tornado sirens !
Bad idea, that.