Ensemble Weather Prediction at the Navy DSRC in Support of Army Testing Operations

The Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are collaborating to study the feasibility of using a Linux-based HPC system at the Navy DoD Supercomputing Resource Center (DSRC), located at Stennis Space Center, Miss., for running an ensemble weather prediction system to support forecasters at the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC). The Navy DSRC is one of five DOD HPCMP supercomputing centers that provide DoD scientists and engineers with the resources necessary to solve the most demanding computational problems. Historically the HPMCP has provided small dedicated HPC systems to support mission critical projects requiring on-site supercomputer capabilities. However, in the last few years greater emphasis has been placed on using the DSRCs for executing time-critical, recurring jobs.

Operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) fits precisely this kind of use, and the HPCMP recently provided to ATEC a Dedicated Support Partition (DSP) for developing and running in real-time the Ensemble Four-Dimensional Weather (4DWX) system developed by NCAR's Research Applications Laboratory (RAL). This presentation will describe 1) the 4DWX system and how it is used by ATEC forecasters; 2) the opportunities that using DSRCs present to a subset of the NWP community; 3) the challenges of meeting ATEC's operational requirements for data transfer and visualization while working within the DSRC environment; and 4) the project's achievements to date.