Weather forecasting gets supercomputing boost.(GOVERNMENTCONNECTION)

GEO World, April, 2007

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) activated its newest weather and climate supercomputers. The move should increase computing power for the nation's climate and weather forecasts by 320 percent.

The two new machines, produced by Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp., can process 14 trillion calculations per second and handle more than 240 million global observations daily. The systems are ranked 36th and 37th in the world on the Top 500 list of the world's fastest computers.

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Together, they should enable NOAA's National Weather Service to deliver more products with greater accuracy and at longer lead times. Ultimately, the supercomputers should consume more data and generate advanced models that could...

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