A supercomputer upgrade is paying off for the U.S. National Weather Service, with new high-resolution models that will offer better insight into severe weather.

The improvement is easy to see in the depiction (below) showing the difference between the older and newer model. In a six-hour forecast on a moving storm system, thunderstorms — illustrated in red and yellow — are now made visible in the newer model, called “High-Resolution Rapid Refresh” (Hrrr). This gives forecasters better information to work with when warning about a threat.

noaa weather model1.jpg NOAA

This improvement in modeling detail is a result of a supercomputer upgrade in the summer of 2013. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the weather service, put into production two new IBM supercomputers, each 213 teraflops, running Linux on Intel processors. These systems replaced 74-teraflop, four-year old systems.

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