SCIENCE

Experts, including ORNL’s James Hack, search for ways to build knowledge of the Earth system

A committee formed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Research Council (NRC) has released a report recommending ways to advance climate modeling over the next two decades. Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) James Hack was a member of the 15-person committee. He was chosen because he is a former climate model developer and head of the Oak Ridge Climate Change Science Institute and director of the ORNL National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS), which houses the OLCF and the Titan supercomputer.

“As director of a facility like [the NCCS], I am very much aware of what the computational environments are all about, how they’re evolving, where they’re going, and what kind of challenge that’s going to present in the model-development process,” says Hack on why he was chosen to help with the report. His knowledge of climate model development and the supercomputing resources used to run climate simulations made him an invaluable asset to the committee.

Read the full story at http://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2012/10/18/supercomputing-director-and-national-council-recommend-climate-modeling-advances/.