Computing upgrade paves way for planned model improvements.
The United States is reclaiming a global top spot in high-performance computing to support weather and climate forecasts. NOAA, part of the Department of Commerce, today announced a significant upgrade to computing capacity, storage space, and interconnect speed of its Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System. This upgrade keeps the agency’s supercomputing capacity on par with other leading weather forecast centers around the world.
“We are committed to put America back on top of international leadership with the best weather forecasts, powered by the fastest supercomputers and world-class weather models,” said Neil Jacobs, Ph.D., acting NOAA administrator.
Two new Cray computers, an operational primary and backup, will be located in Manassas, Virginia, and Phoenix. The computers — each with a 12 petaflop capacity — will be operational and ready to implement model upgrades by early 2022 after a period of code migration and testing. They will replace the existing Cray and Dell systems, "Luna" and "Mars" in Reston, Virginia, and "Surge" and "Venus" in Orlando, Florida.
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