Central Operations Ben Kyger Acting Director / NCEP CIO

Overview  NCEP Central Operations (NCO)  Mission  Products and Services  Customers

NCO Mission Develop, sustain and enhance the information technology (IT) infrastructure required to support the NCEP enterprise. Hardware | Software | Telecommunications

NCO Mission “Leading NCEP’s Information Technology”

NCO Mission  Execute the NCEP operational model suite  Create climate, weather, ocean and environmental hazard products  Manage improvements to the NCEP model suite  Support the research, development, and transition of new or enhanced models to operations  Develop meteorological software  Used by the NCEP Centers to create forecaster generated products  Manage the flow of data and products  To and from the NCEP centers, partners, and customers

NCEP Operational Model Suite  NCO executes a world-class suite of operational models  20 model runs per day  4 different cycles  Models span a wide spectrum, including:  Climate  Global  Ocean  Regional  Hurricane  Hazard

World-Class Supercomputing  IBM Power 5  15.5 teraflops Linpack sustained  148 Power 5+ Nodes  2,368 processors  4,736 gigabytes of memory  150 terabytes of disk space  75 terabyte tape archive  FY’09 Upgrade  ~Three times the computational performance of the current system

Resource Management

Operational Model Data Ingest  A global suite of environmental data is input into models  Observations are ingested continuously | 24x7x365  Observations summary  Satellite sources - ~1.4 billion observations are received each day  Operational geostationary and polar orbiters  Research satellites  Non-satellite sources – ~430 thousand observations are received each day  Surface reports  Land  Marine  Upper-air profiles  Land Soundings  Aircraft

Operational Model Product Creation  14.8 million model products are generated and distributed daily  Model product definition is a horizontal grid for:  A specified region  North America  A specified resolution  ½ degree latitude/longitude  One parameter  Temperature  One vertical level  500 Millibars  One forecast time  24 hours  A wide variety of model products support the NCEP mission

Model Product Samples HWRF Surface Forecast WW3 Wave height/winds GFS Upper Air Forecast over South America SREF Probability of Precip >.25 inch/6hr

Dependable, Reliable Performance

Changes to the NCEP Model Suite  NCO:  Manages the implementation of changes to the NCEP production suite  Executes software engineering processes to ensure high reliability and efficiency  Runs new or improved models in parallel to support model evaluation by NCEP centers and partners

NOAA Research & Development Supercomputing  Gaithersburg, MD (NCEP)  IBM p575 Supercomputer System  8.7 teraflops Linpack sustained  83 Power 5+ Nodes  1,328 processors (16 per node), 1.9 gigahertz speed  2,656 gigabytes of shared memory  160 terabytes of disk space  5.5 Petabyte tape archive  Princeton, NJ ( GFDL)  SGI Supercomputer  5248 Itanium processors  10.3 TB of memory  516 TB of disk space  6.8 PB of tape storage  Boulder, CO ( GSD)  APPRO Supercomputer  1440 Woodcrest Xeon processors  1.5 TB of memory  168 TB of disk space  0.5 PB of tape storage

Meteorological Forecast Software NCO develops and maintains N-AWIPS, the National Centers-Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System

N-AWIPS Key Attributes  N-AWIPS Software:  Is used to create a diverse set of forecast products  Ingests, performs calculations on and displays meteorological observational and model data  Operates on the full spectrum of geographic and temporal scales  Is adaptable, allowing for the introduction of new data, products and functional improvements  Has the flexibility to support a diverse user base  NCEP Centers (AWC, CPC, HPC, NHC, OPC, SPC)  Automated products on the CCS  NWS Alaska, Pacific, & River Forecast Centers  Unidata (~200 universities)  Government labs

N-AWIPS Product Samples Hurricane Track Forecast From the Tropical Prediction Center’s National Hurricane Center Tornado Watch From the Storm Prediction Center

N-AWIPS Product Samples 6 to 10 Day Forecast From the Climate Prediction Center Upper Level Aviation Chart From the Aviation Weather Center

N-AWIPS Product Sample Unified Surface Analysis Collaboration of the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center, Ocean Prediction Center, Tropical Prediction Center and Pacific Region

Data and Product Flows  NCO develops, manages, maintains and monitors:  Wide and Local Area Networks  600+ Network servers and workstations  Software to support data ingest  Web Services for customer product access  Partners with NOAA web services  Data and product flows to NCEP, its partners and customers  Senior Duty Meteorologist serves as NWS primary point of contact for problem resolution

NCEP Wide Area Network NCEP high speed network NCWCP, NSOF, TOC, NOC, WWB and CCS Sites Fairmont and Gaithersburg NCEP lower speed network CCS Sites Fairmont WV and G’Burg MD, AWC, SPC, TPC, SEC and Other Partners

NCO Customers  NOAA Partners:  NCEP Centers  AWC | CPC | EMC | HPC | OPC | SPC | SEC | TPC  NWS Local Weather Offices and River Forecast Centers  NCDC, NESDIS, GSD…  Government Agencies  DOD | DHS | EPA | FAA | DAG  Foreign weather services  Worldwide Weather Community  Aviation, emergency managers, ocean transportation, hydrology, recreation…  Weather vendors and media outlets  University and research organizations  Private citizens

Questions?