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posted by CoolHand on Sunday August 23 2015, @10:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the accurate-weathermen-at-last-yeah-right dept.

Original URL: http://phys.org/news/2015-08-future-weather-agency-titan-advance.html

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, extreme weather events have caused more than $1 trillion in devastation since 1980 in the United States alone. It's a staggering figure, but not nearly as staggering as the death toll associated with these events—approximately 10,000 lives.

The prediction of low-probability, high-impact events such as hurricanes, droughts, and tornadoes, etc., has proven to have profound economic and social impacts when it comes to limiting or preventing mass property damages and saving human lives. But regardless of the aim, predicting weather has always been a tricky business.

However, thanks to one of the world's most powerful computers, it's becoming less tricky and more accurate. Researchers from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) have used the Titan supercomputer, located at the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to refine their highly lauded weather prediction model, the Integrated Forecasting System (IFS), in hopes of further understanding their future computational needs for more localized weather forecasts.

ECMWF is both a research institute and a 24/7 operational service, supported by 34 European countries. In the United States, the IFS is perhaps best known as the weather model that gave the earliest indication of Hurricane Sandy's path in 2012. Sandy is the second costliest hurricane in US history and the most powerful of the 2012 season. "Our ensemble forecasting system predicted the landfall of superstorm Sandy on the US East Coast more than 7 days in advance," said Erland Kallen, director of research at ECMWF.

Sandy was responsible for 117 American deaths (primarily because of drowning) and cost the United States $65 billion. Obviously, the sooner decision makers know where storms like Sandy are heading, the faster they can move to minimize the damage.

And that's precisely the aim of ECMWF's research on Titan at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science User Facility. By harnessing 230,000 of Titan's cores and refining communication within their model, researchers have been able to determine the limits of their current model implementation and the computational refactoring necessary to take the model to unprecedented levels of resolution and detail.


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  • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Sunday August 23 2015, @10:34PM

    by inertnet (4071) on Sunday August 23 2015, @10:34PM (#226741) Journal

    It is said that one butterfly might defeat this Titan.

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