Bangalore: As the world goes wallowing over climatic changes, one thing that everyone can probably agree on is that the more we push computational resources at modeling weather changes, the merrier it gets. This statement has clearly been proved with the introduction of a new supercomputer, Yellowstone, at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The IBM made supercomputer is primarily designed to tackle a huge array of computations and experiments which could help scientists and researchers across the world to understand and take cautious measures against some of the most destructive natural forces such as tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes.

Although not the most powerful supercomputer ever, the Yellowstone is 13th fastest supercomputer in the world, according to Top500, which ranked the 500 fastest computers. With a calculation speed of 1.5 petaflops, the Yellowstone has 4000 nodes or individual computers and 70,000 processors.  This behemoth can calculate at an astonishing speed of 1.5 calculations per second. The memory size is 144.6 terabytes. The system software mainly is comprised of Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system for scientific computing, along with LSF Batch Subsystem and Resource Manager and IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS).

According to NCAR, scientists use Yellowstone and its associated resources to model and analyze complex processes within the atmosphere, oceans, ice caps, and throughout the Earth system, accelerating scientific research in climate change, severe weather, geomagnetic storms, carbon sequestration, aviation safety, wildfires, and many other topics.

 “The Yellowstone supercomputer will dramatically advance our understanding of Earth,” says Al Kellie, director of NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) on NCAR’s website. “Its computing capacity and speed will allow us to investigate a wide range of phenomena that affect our lives, with more detail than ever before.”

 As the first assignment, the Yellowstone is all set to undertake over 11 research projects, said NWSC technology developer director Rich Loft.