Supercomputers Are Driving A Revolution In Hurricane Forecasting

Back in 1998, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts housed the 27th most-powerful supercomputer in the world, with 116 cores providing a maximum performance of 213 gigaflops. Today, the ECMWF forecasting center has the world’s 27th and 28th most powerful supercomputers, each with 126,000 cores and 20,000 times the computing power of its machine two decades ago. This dramatic increase in computing power at the European center—as well as similar increases at US-based and other international numerical modeling centers—helps to explain the dramatic increase in hurricane-forecast accuracy over the same time period.