New supercomputers advance weather and climate forecasts, models

It’s a deceptively simple question: What’s the weather going to be like today?

To find the answer, you might check your weather app or turn on the news to watch colorful forecasts sweep across the screen.

While the information is delivered to you quickly — and often with a charming meteorologist’s grin — it’s only made possible by computers processing vast amounts of weather data.

Weather forecast computing at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the federal agency that oversees the National Weather Service, received a tremendous boost this summer when the newest weather and climate supercomputers in the country came into operation.

In partnership with General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), NOAA replaced two of their older generation supercomputers with two new Hewlett Packard Enterprise Cray supercomputers.