NOAA Launches Twin Supercomputers, Tripling Operational Forecasting Capacity

By Oliver Peckham

June 29, 2022

In February 2020, the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that it would be procuring two HPE Cray systems, allowing the organization to triple its operational supercomputing capacity for weather and climate applications. Now, those efforts have come to fruition: NOAA has inaugurated the two systems, which are named Cactus and Dogwood.

Cactus and Dogwood, procured via managed service provider CSRA (itself a subsidiary of General Dynamics Information Technology, or GDIT), are identical HPE Cray systems. Each one consists of 2,560 nodes powered by AMD Epyc “Rome” 7742 CPUs and an aggregate 1.3 petabytes of memory, all connected by HPE Slingshot-10 networking. Each system is supported by around 26 petabytes of ClusterStor storage, including 614 terabytes of usable flash storage. All told, each system rates at 12.1 peak petaflops and an even 10 Linpack petaflops — eagle-eyed readers might have even spotted the systems tying for the 49th and 50th spots on the spring Top500 list.

Cactus is sited in Phoenix, Arizona, where the state flower is the saguaro cactus flower; Dogwood, meanwhile, is sited in Manassas, Virginia, where the state flower is the flowering dogwood (Dogwood is also pictured in the header, courtesy of GDIT and NOAA). The new systems replace the Cray XC40-based Luna and Surge systems and the Dell-provided Mars and Venus systems, which are split between Reston, Virginia and Orlando, Florida. (Cactus and Dogwood are intentionally sited on opposite coasts to hedge against extreme weather on the East Coast.)

Image courtesy of NOAA.

These preceding systems had an aggregate computing capacity around 8 peak petaflops; the 24.2 peak petaflops provided by Cactus and Dogwood constitute a tripling of that operational supercomputing capacity and an increase in NOAA’s total supercomputing capacity (which also includes 18 petaflops of R&D supercomputing) from around 26 peak petaflops to 42 peak petaflops. (Storage capacity was also doubled through the new systems.)

NOAA’s day-to-day weather modeling operations have already moved to Cactus and Dogwood.

“Generally, improvements will come in four main areas,” explained Brian Gross, director of NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center, in a media briefing. “Higher-resolution models that better capture small scale features like severe thunderstorms; more realistic model physics that better represent the formation of clouds and precipitation; a larger number of individual model simulations to better quantify our confidence in the model’s results; and improved use of all those observations … to better initialize model forecasts. All of these ultimately result in improved forecasts and warnings that help to better protect life and property.”

Further, Gross explained, the new supercomputing capacity will allow for major upgrades to NOAA’s modeling systems in the coming years, including an upgrade to the Global Forecast System (GFS) this fall and a new hurricane forecast model that is scheduled for operation by next year’s hurricane season.

U.S. weather forecasting capabilities have occasionally come under criticism in recent years, particularly in terms of forecasting major weather events like hurricanes — something all parties stressed would improve thanks to the new systems and model upgrades. “Through strategic and sustained investments, the U.S. is reclaiming a global top spot in high-performance computing to provide more accurate and timely climate forecasts to the public,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

“This is a big day for NOAA and the state of weather forecasting,” added Ken Graham, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service. “Researchers are developing new ensemble-based forecast models at record speed, and now we have the computing power needed to implement many of these substantial advancements to improve weather and climate prediction.”

NOAA has an eight-year contract (with an optional two-year renewal) with GDIT, with the first phase of the contract covering the first five years of operation. NOAA will work with GDIT to plan a subsequent upgrade phase for Cactus and Dogwood.

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