APPLICATIONS

NOAA collaboration continues NCCS climate work: The National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) will provide the resources to research advanced climate models and simulations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The collaboration is the result of a three year memorandum of understanding between the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science and NOAA which will make available more than 10 million hours on three of the DOE’s top supercomputers to study climate change. The NCCS will provide its Cray XT4 known as Jaguar, further boosting its profile as a premier system for climate simulation. Besides exploring climate models researchers will perform weather prediction research on the DOE machines. “This is a great step forward in further developing the relationship between DOE and NOAA in the important area of climate research,” said NCCS Director James Hack. “It provides a solid foundation for the discussions ORNL has been having with NOAA aimed at cross agency partnerships to better coordinate our respective climate science efforts.” The Community Climate Systems Model, developed by the DOE and National Science Foundation, is the other major global climate modeling effort supported by the NCCS. The presence of both model development efforts at ORNL will provide opportunities for the respective activities to leverage experience on the laboratory’s new petascale platforms. The NCCS has a strong history of climate research, as its Cheetah system was responsible for 40 percent of the data used in the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.