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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram , Nov 23

THE National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), specialising in numerical weather prediction models, has emerged as the organisation with the fastest computing facility in the Indian sub-continent.

A large number of organisations in the country and the sub-continent are utilising the NCMRWF capability for R&D work related to understanding and prediction of weather patterns, Dr L.S. Rathore and Dr Akhilesh Gupta, leading scientists, informed Business Line.

Although NCMRWF forecasts are being appreciated in different quarters for being quantitative and sufficiently accurate, there are limitations in issuing the forecasts. Low resolution of the numerical prediction models and need for high-end super computing system were two of them.

Dr Gupta and Dr Rathore said that advanced countries like the US, the UK and Japan were much ahead in evolving quite high-resolution models. There was an urgent need for India to develop the latest high-resolution global and meso-scale models to further improve forecasting skill in the country. Although NCMRWF has recently acquired a high-end computer, the CRAY SV1, for running the operational global model, it was still not adequate for running very high-resolution global models. "We need to upgrade this computer system to cater to future computing requirements," the scientists said.

NCMRWF has a number of global, regional and meso-scale forecast models run operationally at present. The global forecast model is a spectral model with a triangular truncation at 80 waves in the horizontal and has 18 layers in the vertical (T80L18). The model is run once a day with 00 UTC initial conditions and generates forecasts unto seven days. A higher resolution global model T-170L28 (75x75 sq. km resolution in the horizontal and 28 layers in the vertical) has recently been installed.

Current computing resources

The super computer, CRAY X/MP-14 system procured in 1988 by the NCMRWF, was upgraded to X/MP-216 in 1992. Dr Rathore and Dr Gupta said the computer system was since being used for the preparation of medium range weather forecast for users. One VAX8810 system was being used as front-end to Cray and another (VAX8250) was being used as Gateway to Cray.

Two 4-processor ORIGIN200 systems in failsafe mode along with peripherals were installed in June 1999, by the Cray maintenance agency to serve as a back-up system. A DEC-ALPHA distributed memory architecture-based parallel system, along with peripherals, was installed at the centre during June-August 1999. All the software packages of the operational forecast suite were ported on this system. A two-node (eight-processor) PARAM10000 was installed during the same period.

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