There’s been some buzz in the last week as it was announced that NCAR’s new climate supercomputer was finally online. Back in 2010, I ran a story called “NCAR’s Dirty Little Secret” which outlined the new supercomputing center being built in Wyoming, while NCAR is in “green” Boulder Colorado. From that article:
“Having an NCAR supercomputing facility in Wyoming will be transformative for the University of Wyoming, will represent a significant step forward in the state’s economic development, and will provide exceptional opportunities for NCAR to make positive contributions to the educational infrastructure of an entire state,” says William Gern, the university’s vice president for research and economic development.
Gosh, what an opportunity for Wyoming. But why give the opportunity away? Colorado doesn’t want this opportunity? None of the politicians in Colorado want to be able to say to their constituents that they brought “economic development” and “positive contributions to the educational infrastructure of an entire state”? That doesn’t seem right.
The answer may very well lie in economics, but not the kind they mention in feel good press releases.
You see as we know from supercomputers, they need a lot of energy to operate. And because they operate in enclosed spaces, a lot of energy to keep them cooled so they don’t burn up from the waste heat they generate.
For all their sophistication, without power for operation and cooling, a supercomputer is just dead weight and space.
Electricity is king.
Interestingly, in the press releases and web pages, NCAR provides no answers (at least none that were easy to find) to how much electricity the new supercomputer might use for operation and cooling. They also provide no explanation as to why Colorado let this opportunity go to another state. I had to dig into NCAR’s interoffice staff notes to find the answer.
The answer is: electricity.
Measuring 108,000 square feet in total with 15,000-20,000 square feet of raised floor, it will be built for 8 megawatts of power, with 4-5 megawatts for computing and 3-4 for cooling.
8 megawatts! Yowza.
…
(I noted then that electricity is significantly cheaper in Wyoming.)
click for source data
So besides the fact that NCAR abandoned “green” Colorado for it’s cheaper electricity rates and bond program, what’s the “dirty little secret?
Coal, the “dirtiest of fuels”, some say.
According to Sourcewatch, Wyoming is quite something when it comes to coal. Emphasis mine.
Wyoming is the nation’s highest coal producer, with over 400 million tons of coal produced in the state each year. In 2006, Wyoming’s coal production accounted for almost 40% of the nation’s coal.[1] Currently Wyoming coal comes from four of the State’s ten major coal fields. The Powder River Coal Field has the largest production in the world – in 2007, it produced over 436 million short tons.[2]
Wyoming coal is shipped to 35 other states. The coal is highly desirable because of its low sulfur levels.[3] On average Wyoming coal contains 0.35 percent sulfur by weight, compared with 1.59 percent for Kentucky coal and 3 to 5 percent for other eastern coals. Although Wyoming coal may have less sulfur, it also a lower “heat rate” or fewer Btu’s of energy. On average Wyoming coal has 8600 Btu’s of energy per pound, while Eastern coal has heat rates of over 12,000 Btu’s per pound, meaning that plants have to burn 50 percent more Wyoming coal to equal the power output from Eastern coal.[4]
Coal-fired power plants produce almost 95% of the electricity generated in Wyoming. Wyoming’s average retail price of electricity is 5.27 cents per kilowatt hour, the 2nd lowest rate in the nation[5]
CHEYENNE, Wyoming — The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is launching operations this month of one of the world’s most powerful and energy-efficient supercomputers, providing the nation with a major new tool to advance understanding of the atmospheric and related Earth system sciences.
Named “Cheyenne,” the 5.34-petaflop system is capable of more than triple the amount of scientific computing performed by the previous NCAR supercomputer, Yellowstone. It also is three times more energy efficient.
Scientists across the country will use Cheyenne to study phenomena ranging from wildfires and seismic activity to gusts that generate power at wind farms. Their findings will lay the groundwork for better protecting society from natural disasters, lead to more detailed projections of seasonal and longer-term weather and climate variability and change, and improve weather and water forecasts that are needed by economic sectors from agriculture and energy to transportation and tourism.
“Cheyenne will help us advance the knowledge needed for saving lives, protecting property, and enabling U.S. businesses to better compete in the global marketplace,” said Antonio J. Busalacchi, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. “This system is turbocharging our science.”
UCAR manages NCAR on behalf of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Cheyenne currently ranks as the 20th fastest supercomputer in the world and the fastest in the Mountain West, although such rankings change as new and more powerful machines begin operations. It is funded by NSF as well as by the state of Wyoming through an appropriation to the University of Wyoming.
Cheyenne is housed in the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC), one of the nation’s premier supercomputing facilities for research. Since the NWSC opened in 2012, more than 2,200 scientists from more than 300 universities and federal labs have used its resources.
“Through our work at the NWSC, we have a better understanding of such important processes as surface and subsurface hydrology, physics of flow in reservoir rock, and weather modification and precipitation stimulation,” said William Gern, vice president of research and economic development at the University of Wyoming. “Importantly, we are also introducing Wyoming’s school-age students to the significance and power of computing.”
The NWSC is located in Cheyenne, and the name of the new system was chosen to honor the support the center has received from the people of that city. The name also commemorates the upcoming 150th anniversary of the city, which was founded in 1867 and named for the American Indian Cheyenne Nation.
INCREASED POWER, GREATER EFFICIENCY
Cheyenne was built by Silicon Graphics International, or SGI (now part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.), with DataDirect Networks (DDN) providing centralized file system and data storage components. Cheyenne is capable of 5.34 quadrillion calculations per second (5.34 petaflops, or floating point operations per second).
The new system has a peak computation rate of more than 3 billion calculations per second for every watt of energy consumed. That is three times more energy efficient than the Yellowstone supercomputer, which is also highly efficient.
The data storage system for Cheyenne provides an initial capacity of 20 petabytes, expandable to 40 petabytes with the addition of extra drives. The new DDN system also transfers data at the rate of 220 gigabytes per second, which is more than twice as fast as the previous file system’s rate of 90 gigabytes per second.
Cheyenne is the latest in a long and successful history of supercomputers supported by the NSF and NCAR to advance the atmospheric and related sciences.
“We’re excited to provide the research community with more supercomputing power,” said Anke Kamrath, interim director of NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, which oversees operations at the NWSC. “Scientists have access to increasingly large amounts of data about our planet. The enhanced capabilities of the NWSC will enable them to tackle problems that used to be out of reach and obtain results at far greater speeds than ever.”
MORE DETAILED PREDICTIONS
High-performance computers such as Cheyenne allow researchers to run increasingly detailed models that simulate complex events and predict how they might unfold in the future. With more supercomputing power, scientists can capture additional processes, run their models at a higher resolution, and conduct an ensemble of modeling runs that provide a fuller picture of the same time period.
“Providing next-generation supercomputing is vital to better understanding the Earth system that affects us all, ” said NCAR Director James W. Hurrell. “We’re delighted that this powerful resource is now available to the nation’s scientists, and we’re looking forward to new discoveries in climate, weather, space weather, renewable energy, and other critical areas of research.”
Some of the initial projects on Cheyenne include:
Long-range, seasonal to decadal forecasting: Several studies led by George Mason University, the University of Miami, and NCAR aim to improve prediction of weather patterns months to years in advance. Researchers will use Cheyenne’s capabilities to generate more comprehensive simulations of finer-scale processes in the ocean, atmosphere, and sea ice. This research will help scientists refine computer models for improved long-term predictions, including how year-to-year changes in Arctic sea ice extent may affect the likelihood of extreme weather events thousands of miles away.
Wind energy: Projecting electricity output at a wind farm is extraordinarily challenging as it involves predicting variable gusts and complex wind eddies at the height of turbines, which are hundreds of feet above the sensors used for weather forecasting. University of Wyoming researchers will use Cheyenne to simulate wind conditions on different scales, from across the continent down to the tiny space near a wind turbine blade, as well as the vibrations within an individual turbine itself. In addition, an NCAR-led project will create high-resolution, 3-D simulations of vertical and horizontal drafts to provide more information about winds over complex terrain. This type of research is critical as utilities seek to make wind farms as efficient as possible.
Space weather: Scientists are working to better understand solar disturbances that buffet Earth’s atmosphere and threaten the operation of satellites, communications, and power grids. New projects led by the University of Delaware and NCAR are using Cheyenne to gain more insight into how solar activity leads to damaging geomagnetic storms. The scientists plan to develop detailed simulations of the emergence of the magnetic field from the subsurface of the Sun into its atmosphere, as well as gain a three-dimensional view of plasma turbulence and magnetic reconnection in space that lead to plasma heating.
Extreme weather: One of the leading questions about climate change is how it could affect the frequency and severity of major storms and other types of severe weather. An NCAR-led project will explore how climate interacts with the land surface and hydrology over the United States, and how extreme weather events can be expected to change in the future. It will use advanced modeling approaches at high resolution (down to just a few miles) in ways that can help scientists configure future climate models to better simulate extreme events.
Climate engineering: To counter the effects of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, some experts have proposed artificially cooling the planet by injecting sulfates into the stratosphere, which would mimic the effects of a major volcanic eruption. But if society ever tried to engage in such climate engineering, or geoengineering, the results could alter the world’s climate in unintended ways. An NCAR-led project is using Cheyenne’s computing power to run an ensemble of climate engineering simulations to show how hypothetical sulfate injections could affect regional temperatures and precipitation.
Smoke and global climate: A study led by the University of Wyoming will look into emissions from wildfires and how they affect stratocumulus clouds over the southeastern Atlantic Ocean. This research is needed for a better understanding of the global climate system, as stratocumulus clouds, which cover 23 percent of Earth’s surface, play a key role in reflecting sunlight back into space. The work will help reveal the extent to which particles emitted during biomass burning influence cloud processes in ways that affect global temperatures.
gusts that generate power at wind farms
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lol using coal to study wind power. delicious.
Such a fine piece of machinery should run exclusively on solar and/or wind power, guided by its own awesome predictive brainpower. To cement its green credentials, it should be completely disconnected from the grid and have no back-up power running on polluting diesel/gasoline/gas generators. That’d be called ‘putting your money where your mouth is’.
You’re a funny man! 🙂
Even they know that ain’t happening.
I am preparing an epic 50 part series of articles for WUWT themed on “Building Wattson”. It will take me two more years before I have finished the first drafts and begin publishing the first article.
Wattson is an all encompassing climate science software project covering all things climate related.
The Building Wattson series will step through the process of building the software from scratch. Using Test Driven Development and Domain Driven Design principles. We will drive the development through from UI to Database, using various design patterns and best practices of today, as well as the modern tooling for software development now available.
I will write an introductory article about the series and about Wattson itself sometime this year.
I will also elaborate on my expertise on the subjects necessary to carry out this task.
Climate models will also be part of the series.
The completed software code as a whole will not be released publically but instead will be … yet to be determined but likely handed ownership to Anthony Watts.
Meanwhile, computer chips greater than 100 times more powerful than todays best are schedule for commercial production in 2022 :
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330971
ggm
Irony is soooo… Ironic…
http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WY
The Sixteen foot coal seams in the Powder River basin help a lot when elsewhere most are about four feet.
They will be able to run their models faster and faster, and produce more and more meaningless piles of irrelevant numbers. Whoopee.
My understanding of these supercomputers is that they are really designed so multiple problems can be worked on simultaneously, not for one problem. It’s cloud computing. No one project really uses the whole thing at any given time. I can’t imagine even the GCMs require that much power, but when you want to run all of the GCMs along with the programs from 1000 other users, it makes sense.
GCMs divide the atmosphere into grids, to model the entire earth, there could be 100’s of thousands to millions of blocks in the grid.
The GCM then solves the same equations for each block, calculates how the result of each block influence the surrounding blocks, then solve the same equations for each block again.
A GCM could easily use thousands of processors, in fact it is the type of problem for which massively parallel computing was designed.
Other types of models do the same thing. Dividing their computation world into lots of little blocks that each get resolved individually and in parallel.
HA, tis no wonder to one’s amazement that the output data (results) is FUBAR from the get go.
Me thinks the above is a good description of a PCCP (perpetual computing computer program).
I am aware of this. Their implementation is not just for GCMs, however.
Hand it over to the IRS. They always complain about not having enough computing resources.
They’d have more computing power if they didn’t destroy their hard drives.
I suspect that claims for its ability to predict climate were made to ease funding . . . so many otherwise worthwhile projects have been hung on climate change to get the funds they need. No doubt climate will be studied, but so will many other things not yet imagined.
Will this fantastic machine now be able to produce the scientifically conclusive, empirical evidence that Co2 does actually cause Global Warming?
That is to say, will it, and its associated sensors in ARGO buoys, Balloons (No! not the human type) Stephenson screens, satellites etc. etc. be able to quantify precisely how the human emissions of 0.0004ppm Co2, of the entire atmosphere competes with atmospheric water vapour, not to mention oceanic water itself which, thankfully, dwarfs the atmospheric content.
Will it also be able to accurately determine the hitherto undeterminable effects of clouds on our planet’s atmosphere?
Will it be able to produce predictions of earth temperatures that actually mimic observable measurements?
Well, I guess we won’t know the answers to any of these questions for another 20 years. Hey Ho.
Meanwhile, US taxpayers are fleeced for more barmy climactic pseudo-science; the world’s nations are herded down the route of subjugation at the alter of the green human haters; and the ‘climate change community’ have closed ranks on any criticism of their settled science.
I have probably said this before, so sorry to bore you guys, but I was an AGW believer and went looking for the evidence. I headed for the usual alarmist’s websites/blogs and was horrified at the reception. Browbeating and indoctrination at the reception desk just doesn’t begin to describe the welcome.
When I discovered WUWT and Paul Homewood’s Notmanypeopleknowthat, I was met with enthusiastic crowd who only want answers to questions. No browbeating, no propaganda, no preconceived ideas, nothing like the alarmists.
Thank you guys. I occasionally have my doubts, I guess as we all do, but I’ll get informed answers from the sceptics, I’ll get indoctrination from the alarmist’s.
Super computers can’t compete with the human capacity for curiosity.
The coal industry in Wyoming has been seriously hurt by Obama EPA rules the last couple of years. Some mines were forced out of business, causing the state massive loss of revenue. Hope that’ll change now, I’d like to keep my $44/month electricity bill (equal payment plan).
A really powerful supercomputer would be able to improve climate models a very great deal by calculating explicitly important processes like turbulence, convection, thunderstorms, tornadoes, orographic precipitation etc that are unavoidably “parameterized” today. However that would require going from 100 km grids, which are common today to 1 km grids (or finer). This requires 100^4 = 100 000 000 times more computing power (since we are dealing with three spatial dimensions plus time).
Ain’t gonna happen soon.
Each increase in computing power gets us an eensy bit closer. (That’s a technical term.)
…I thought nearly imperceptible increments were measured in smidgens.
It”s actually more efficient to wait for a few orders of magnitude in computing power.
I heard all that it can do is churn out “42”.
When Trump pulls the climate funding maybe they can use it to get a more precise value for Pi out to say, 10^50 digits? That’ll keep it “busy” for a little while…
Yeah, I hear it. “Di-di-di-di-dah Di-di-dah-dah-dah”, over and over again. Stop! Make it stop!
With that much computing power you could predict the orbits of every asteroid over the size of a Volkswagen found in our solar system several years into the future. You might say that the risk of a big one hitting earth is very small and that’s true but the risk to earth from getting a little warmer with more CO2 is far far less than that.
I believe they can already calculate orbits for objects we can find. The problem is detecting all the dangerously-large objects while far enough away. I think.
Brians356: The orbits aren’t independent of multi body effects and the three body gravitational effect is still looking for a solution, I believe.
Oh my my, t’aint no such problem exists.
Now iffen they can “see” and measure six (6) earth size planets at a distance of 40 light years ….. then they can surely “see” all asteroids bigger than a golf ball residing within the orbit of Pluto.
“
Coal Train — A Reporter At Large by John McPhee. Published in The New Yorker in 2005.
Beyond the detriments of Powder River Basin coal was the signal fact that it was as much as five times lower in sulfur than Appalachian coal. With the Clean Air Act, power plants were required to scrub sulfur out or burn low sulfur coal. The five hundred power plants that use coal to light, heat, cool, and compute fifty-two per cent of just about everything in the United States were suddenly swiveling their attention to Powder River coal. A combination of companies built the Orin Line — the longest new rail line in the United States since the nineteen-thirties. At various sites along the Orin Line, large machines removed a hundred feet of overburden to begin an invasion of the planet unprecedented in scale. Belle Ayr, Black Thunder, North Antelope, Jacobs Ranch — in fewer than twenty years, mines of the Powder River Basin were the largest coal mines in the history of the world.
Coal trains go into the Powder River Basin like tent caterpillars up a tree.
https://yaleunion.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/CoalTrain_McPhee.pdf
I guess whoever coined the term “”an invasion of the planet unprecedented in scale” has never seen the Grand Canyon or Hell’s Canyon (most scenic and deepest river gorges on the continent, respectively).
I suspect the “tent caterpillars up a tree” was just meant to be derogatory.
Cheyenne is so powerful it can execute an infinite loop in a mere 24 hours. 😀
(I know, it’s an old joke..)
Wait, what’s HAL going to think when he finds out he’s being used to provide justification for cutting off his own source of cheap power? “I’m sorry, Dave, I simply cannot let you do that.”
“To counter the effects of heat-trapping greenhouse gases,” But there is no evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero. Furthermore there is also no real evidence that a radiametric greenhouse effect caused by the LWIR absorption properties of greenhouse gases even exists. If CO2 really affected climate then the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened. It does not matter how powerful the computer running the models is if the models are wrong.
“long and successful history of supercomputers supported by the NSF and NCAR to advance the atmospheric and related sciences.”
What successes are these pray tell? All they’ll end up getting is a prediction of a series of BBQ summers – which, I understand they already have those in Wyoming. The Met Office will be called in as consultants. One way to make these predictions true, at least in the UK would be to sell BBQ’s with 100sq metre umbrellas built in. I’ll bet they ordered this equipment believing HRC would be going to the Oval Office. They are putting the best face on it they can, I guess.
This is like the quantum measurement problem disturbing the system. Computing the climate requires so much energy that it will alter the climate.
I sure hope they send the following warning to all climate scientists approved to run code on this new computer: “Remember: garbage in = garbage out. Using a more powerful computer does not change this most basic equation.”
Scientists across the country will use Cheyenne to study phenomena ranging from wildfires and seismic activity to gusts that generate power at wind farms.
No wind farms in Wyoming –
Coal-fired power plants produce almost 95% of the electricity generated in Wyoming. Wyoming’s average retail price of electricity is 5.27 cents per kilowatt hour, the 2nd lowest rate in the nation[5]
Supercomputers are great – if you have a problem they can help with. A weather forecast for 100 hours would be great, and it may be within reach. 100 days? We are not there yet. 100 years? You are fooling yourself.
One supercomputer – one air flow through the blades of a wind turbine :
Visualization created using Yellowstone
Contour lines and isosurfaces provide valuable information about turbulence and aerodynamic drag in this visualization of air flow through the blades of a wind turbine, the product of a simulation on the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center’s Yellowstone system. (Image courtesy Dimitri Mavriplis, University of Wyoming.)
What’s next – climate change?
Reminds me of this from Hitch Hikers’s Guide to the Galaxy;
“Yes, so anyway,” he resumed, “the idea was that into the first ship, the ‘A’ ship, would go all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great artists, you know, all the achievers; and into the third, or ‘C’ ship, would go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did things, and then into the `B’ ship – that’s us – would go everyone else, the middlemen you see.”
Climate “scientists”, and their computers, should be loaded on to the “B” ship.
Supercomputers are AWESOME. I’m less worried about the energy they’re going to use than what we can get out of them.