HPCwire: The Future of Climate Research: A Q&A with ORNL's James Hack

The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing

Leading HPC
Solution Providers

HPCwire >> Features

November 07, 2008

The Future of Climate Research: A Q&A with ORNL's James Hack

by Leo Williams (NCCS Science Writer), for HPCwire

Page: 1 of 4
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 All »

When James Hack came to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) at the end of 2007, he was given two hats: one as the director of ORNL's National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) and the other as leader of ORNL's laboratory-wide climate science effort.

At the helm of the NCCS, he guides the most powerful open science supercomputing center in the world. The NCCS hosts leading research in climate dynamics and the development of alternative energy sources, as well as a wide range of computational sciences -- from basic explorations in nuclear physics and quantum dynamics to astrophysics explorations of supernovas and dark matter.

As leader of ORNL's Climate Change Initiative, he is in charge of pulling together scientists and engineers from across ORNL to advance the state of the science. Hack is uniquely qualified to take on this role. Before coming to ORNL, he headed the Climate Modeling Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., and served as deputy director of the center's Climate and Global Dynamics Division.

We asked Hack about the future of climate science and the climate initiative at ORNL.

HPCwire: How will climate research evolve in the coming years?

Hack: Climate science has largely been curiosity-driven research. But the growing acceptance that humans affect the evolution of atmospheric composition, land use, and so on, all of which in turn affect the climate state, provides a little more focus and a little more urgency to taking a harder look at what the modeling tools are capable of providing in the form of specific consequences for society.

That to me is the transformation. There's a growing need for improvements in simulation fidelity and predictive skill. The potential consumers of that kind of simulation information will be leaning hard on the climate change community to provide answers to their questions. That's the change that's going to differentiate the next 10 years of climate change science from the previous 30.

For example, we know from observations over the last 50 years that the snowpack in the Pacific Northwest has been decreasing. At the same time, temperature in the same region has been increasing. If that trend continues, it raises lots of concerns for water resource managers who have counted on storing their water in the form of snow until a certain time of year when it starts melting.

If precipitation never comes down as snow or if it starts melting sooner than you need it, you may not able to meet your water demands. It's an example of an infrastructure that's vulnerable to specific changes in a region's climate state. Many of the solutions to this problem may also bring with them other environmental consequences.

HPCwire: So what can you do to help users of climate data?

Page: 1 of 4
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 All »

Article Tools

Share Options

(Digg, Technorati, more)

Subscribe

Subscribe to HPCwire

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

You must be a registered user in order to comment on HPCwire stories.

Members enjoy:

	Access to Special Content, including Podcasts, Webcasts, and Whitepapers and more!
	Ability to take an active role in the discussions that are shaping the HPC technology discipline!
	Special offers available only to HPCwire members!

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in Here to Comment

Email Address:	Password (case sensitive)

Remember me	Forgot Password?

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Industry

Feeds by Content Type

Top Headlines

Cloudy With a Chance of HPC

Jul 01 | GenomeWeb Daily News | The popularity of cloud computing in the life sciences community was on full display at April's Bio-IT World conference. Read more...

HPC From the Beach

Jul 01 | Linux Magazine | How can getting to the ocean help with HPC computing? Read more...

DARPA Investigates Extreme Supercomputing

Jun 29 | GCN.com | Agency issues RFI for "Ubiquitous High Performance Computing" systems. Read more...

Supercomputers Go From Biggest to Cheapest

Jun 29 | Computerworld | The bottom of the TOP500 reveals the coming revolution in truly accessible high-end computing. Read more...

CPUs Gear Up For -- and Some Avoid -- Hot Chips

Jun 18 | EE Times | Parallel software also takes spotlight at Stanford confab. Read more...

Read more headlines...

Featured Whitepapers

Building High Performance Computing in a Green and Modular Solution Building Block

Apr 14 | | Many HPC IT departments are feeling the rising pressure to deliver more capacity computing and performance while trying to reduce the total cost of ownership. This white paper discusses how an environmentally-friendly and open-standards HPC building block based computing system using flexible interconnect options helps address capacity computing needs.

View the White Paper Library

Multimedia

Webcast: Dell Expands HPC Access and Adoption with Intel Cluster Ready Program

Source: Addison Snell, GM/VP, Tabor Research; sponsored by Dell

Many organizations that could benefit from the use of HPC clusters find that it is complicated to get the systems up and running because of limited IT resources or the complexities of the clusters themselves. Learn how the Intel Cluster Ready program, for which Dell was an original partner, seeks to address this challenge for entry level and mid-range HPC users.

Video White Paper: Architecting a Better Network Storage Solution

BlueArc's Titan architecture represents an evolutionary step in file servers by creating a hardware-based file system that can scale bandwidth, IOPS, and overall data capacity well beyond conventional software-based devices. With its ability to virtualize a massive storage pool of up to four usable petabytes of tiered storage, Titan can scale with growing data requirements, offering a competitive advantage for businesses, researchers, or other enterprises seeking to better manage data growth while still ensuring optimal performance.

Webcast: HPC Development Solutions: Sun Studio & Sun HPC ClusterTools

Sun Studio Compilers and Tools and Sun HPC ClusterTools allow you to create high performance parallel applications for OpenSolaris, Solaris and Linux. Sun Studio Express 11/08 includes MPI performance analysis capabilities and full OpenMP 3.0 compiler support. Learn about all this and the latest in Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.1.