GREENBELT, Md. – NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. recently introduced the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), an integrated set of supercomputing, visualization, and data interaction technologies that will enhance agency capabilities in weather and climate prediction research.
"The NASA Center for Climate Simulation has been designed to meet the unique computational needs of the climate modeling community supported by NASA's Earth Science Division," said Phil Webster, chief of Goddard's Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office, which manages NCCS.
The new center more than doubles the computing capacity available at Goddard one year ago and expands other services to support NASA's growing climate data needs. Enhanced NCCS capabilities include:
Approximately $5,449,739 was provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act toward the completion of NCCS.
Goddard is home to one of the largest contingents of Earth scientists in the world. Scientists in the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City represent the two largest NCCS user groups. GMAO and GISS simulations investigate weather and climate phenomena at time scales ranging from days to centuries.
"The computing resources at NCCS are critical to our ability to use NASA satellite data in our model-based analyses, which help us characterize and understand Earth's changing climate," said Michele Rienecker, GMAO head. "Moreover, NCCS enables us to undertake climate simulations and predictions and to share the results with our fellow scientists and other users."
Several NCCS-hosted simulations are being displayed on the visualization wall for scientists and visitors:
NCCS is part of the NASA High-End Computing Program and serves the agency's Science Mission Directorate. The center was previously known as the NASA Center for Computational Sciences.
A related feature story, video file including high-definition b-roll footage, and other information are available at: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate-sim-center.html