United States weather and climate forecasting are about to receive a significant upgrade. NOAA (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) turned on two new supercomputers that are three times faster than the former supercomputing system!
You will likely notice a huge improvement with the GFS model (Global Forecast System) or “American Model” by this September, ranging from temperatures, precipitation, and severe weather (just in time for the upcoming winter!) The new system will help NOAA with its new hurricane forecast model HAFS (theHurricane Analysis Forecast System) and wants to have the system up and running before the 2023 hurricane season.
These supercomputers are extremely fast, operating at a speed of 12.1 petaflops. A petaflop is one thousand trillion, or one quadrillion, operations per second.
The new supercomputers are named “Dogwood” and “Cactus.” They are named after the flora native to their respective geographic locations of Manassas, Virginia, and Pheonix Arizona. The new supercomputers are replacing NOAA’s previous Cray and IBM supercomputers in Reston, Virginia, and Orlando, Florida.
The new HPE Cray machines, Dogwood and Cactus, are named after the flora native to their respective geographic locations of Manassas, Virginia, and Phoenix, Arizona. They are replacing NOAA’s previous Cray and IBM supercomputers in Reston, Virginia, and Orlando, Florida.