Supercomputer Reproduces a Cyclone's Birth, May Boost Forecasting
(超級電腦重建氣旋的形成推進天氣預報)
2010.07.21 NASA News & Features
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/supercomputer-cyclone.html
As a teen in his native Taiwan, Bo-wen Shen observed helplessly as typhoon
after typhoon pummeled the small island country. Without advanced forecasting
systems, the storms left a trail of human loss and property destruction in
their wake. Determined to find ways to stem the devastation, Shen chose a
career studying tropical weather and atmospheric science.
(Bo-wen Shen來自台灣，親眼目睹遭受颱風重創後的這個小島國，有感於天氣預報的重
要性，決定要研究熱帶天氣及大氣科學。)
Now a NASA-funded research scientist at the University of Maryland-College
Park, Shen has employed NASA's Pleiades supercomputer and atmospheric data
to simulate tropical cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar in 2008. The
result is the first model to replicate the formation of the tropical cyclone
five days in advance.
(由NASA出資的Pleiades超級電腦座落於馬里蘭大學，模擬2008年重創緬甸的 Nargis
氣旋，初步得到氣旋形成前五天的模擬結果。)
Movie: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/supercomputer-cyclone.html
Tropical Cyclone Nargis: 2008
This new animation, developed with the help of NASA's Pleiades super-
computer, illustrates how tropical cyclone Nargis formed in the Indian
Ocean's Bay of Bengal over several days in late April 2008. (No audio.)
Credit: NASA
(超級電腦Pleiades模擬的結果動畫)
To save lives from the high winds, flooding, and storm surges of tropical
cyclones (also known as hurricanes and typhoons), forecasters need to give
as much advance warning as possible and the greatest degree of accuracy
about when and where a storm will occur. In Shen's retrospective simulation,
he was able to anticipate the storm five days in advance of its birth, a
critical forewarning in a region where the meteorology and monitoring of
cyclones is hampered by a lack of data.
(為了拯救遭受強風、洪水、暴潮威脅的生命，不僅需要很多天氣預報，更要能準確的
預報出何時何地會發生。經由 Shen 的模擬結果，預見了形成前五天的颱風，這個訊
息提供了缺乏區域氣象氣旋監測數據的重要情報。)
At the heart of Shen's work is an advanced computer model that could improve
our understanding of the predictability of tropical cyclones. The research
team uses the model to run millions of numbers -- atmospheric conditions like
wind speed, temperature, and moisture -- through a series of equations. This
results in digital data of the cyclone's location and atmospheric conditions
that are plotted on geographical maps.
(Shen 的核心工作是以先進的模式提高熱帶氣旋的預測，研究小組以大氣條件如風速，
溫度和濕度--通過一系列的方程式，描繪出氣旋的定位在地圖上。)
Figure: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/470484main1_Pleiades%20Superco
mputer-226.jpg
縮：http://tinyurl.com/36fkvbs
NASA's Pleiades supercomputer's advanced processing power enabled the
high-resolution replication of cyclone Nargis' formation five days in
advance. Credit: NASA
(NASA 的 Pleiades 超級電腦，它的運算能力顯示 Nargis形成前五天的高解析度。)
Scientists study the maps and data from the model and compare them against
real observations of a past storm (like Nargis) to evaluate the model's
accuracy. The more the model reflects the actual storm results, the greater
confidence researchers have that a particular model can be used to paint a
picture of what the future might look like.
(科學家比較模式及實際天氣數據的準確度，發現模式反映了實際的結果，提高了研究
人員的士氣，預想未來模式可以提供怎樣的結果。)
"To do hurricane forecasting, what's really needed is a model that can
represent the initial weather conditions – air movements and temperatures,
and precipitation – and simulate how they evolve and interact globally and
locally to set a cyclone in motion," said Shen, whose study appeared online
last week in the Journal of Geophysical Research –Atmospheres.
(Shen說:"作颶風的預報需要一個模型，能呈現最初的天氣條件，模擬出之後的演變及
氣旋的形成。" 他的研究上星期發表在地球物理研究期刊。)
"We know what's happening across very large areas. So, we need really good,
high-resolution simulations with the ability to detail conditions across the
smallest possible areas. We've marked several forecasting milestones since
2004, and we can now compute a storm's fine-scale details to 10 times the
level of detail than we could with traditional climate models."
("我們知道在這廣大的區域發生了什麼事，所以我們需要高解析度的模擬能力。自04年
以來，我們現在可以計算出更精確的有別於傳統模型10倍細節的程度，在天氣預報立
下一個里程碑。")
Figure: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/470481main_Cyclone%20Nargis
_MODIS.jpg
縮：http://tinyurl.com/395cndh
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra
satellite captured Cyclone Nargis in early May 2008. At its most intense
point, the category 4 storm, later simulated by Shen's model, boasted
winds of 130 miles an hour before coming ashore in Myanmar on May 2.
Credit: NASA
(NASA的Terra衛星拍攝08年五月初的熱帶氣旋 Nargis，最大強度為四級風暴，之後
被 Shen 作為模式模擬對象。五月二日以每小時130英里的風速登陸緬甸。)
The cyclone's birth prediction is possible because the supercomputer
at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., can process
atmospheric data for global and regional conditions, as well as the fine-
scale measurements like those around the eye of a storm. NASA built the
Pleiades supercomputer in 2008, incrementally boosting its processing
"brain power" since to the capacity of 81,920 desktop CPUs. The upgrades
laid the groundwork for Shen and others to gradually improve simulations of
varying aspects of a storm – from simulations of the path, then intensity,
and now the actual genesis of a storm.
(預測氣旋形成是可能的，NASA 建造 Pleiades 於加州 Ames Research Center 可以處
理全球及區域的大氣數據，08年NASA升級了它的"腦力"奠定 Shen 及其他人模型的基
礎，從模擬的路徑，然後強度，逐步改善成與實際天氣數據吻合的模擬結果。)
The improved simulations can translate into greater accuracy and less guess-
work in assessing when a storm is forming.
(改進的模擬可以轉化為更大的準確性，減少猜測，評估風暴的形成。)
"There is a tendency to over-warn beyond the actual impact area of a storm,
leading people to lose confidence in the warning system and to ignore
warnings that can save their lives," said study co-author Robert Atlas,
director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA)
Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, Fla., and
former chief meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md.
("有一種傾向，過度警告處於風暴直接影響區域的民眾，會導致人們失去對警報的信
心，無視警報能挽救生命的結果。" 該研究的共同作者，前 Goddard Space Flight
Center 首席氣象學家，NOAA大西洋海洋學與氣象學實驗室主任－Robert Atlas 說。)
"Although we've seen tremendous forecasting advances in the past 10 years --
with potential to improve predictions of a cyclone's path and intensity --
they're still not good enough for all of the life-and-death decisions that
forecasters have to make. Tropical cyclones have killed nearly two million
people in the last 200 years, so this remaining 'cone of uncertainty' in our
predictions is unacceptable."
(雖然在過去10年間，我們看到天氣預報的極大進展，改善了熱帶風暴路徑和強度的預測
，但對所有生命倚靠預報決定他們的生死是不足的，過去兩百年已經有兩百萬人死於無
法接受的預報誤差。)
As promising as the new model may be, Atlas cautions that "Shen's model
worked for one cyclone, but it doesn't mean it'll work in real-time for
future storms. The research model Shen and predecessors at NASA have
developedsets the stage for NOAA's researchers to hone and test the new
capability with their own models."
(儘管新模型的前途看好，Atlas 仍警告:" Shen 的模式目前僅適用於一個氣旋，不代表
未來就能實際應用在其它風暴上，Shen 及其他NOAA的研究人員在NASA正在積極測試他
們的模式運作。")
Shen's use of real data from Nargis – one of the 10 deadliest cyclones on
record – with the new global model also yields insights into the dynamics
of weather conditions over time and across different areas that generate
such storms.
(經由 Shen 模擬的及實際的 Nargis 數據，可以發現到動態的天氣條件隨著時間的推移
在不同地區也會產生這樣的風暴。)
"In the last few years, high-resolution global modeling has evolved our
understanding of the physics behind storms and its interaction with atmos-
pheric conditions more rapidly than in the past several decades combined,
"explained Shen, who presented the study last month before peers at the
American Geophysical Union's Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Taipei,
Taiwan. "We can 'see' a storm's physical processes with this advanced global
model – like both the release of heat associated with rainfall and changes
in environmental atmospheric flow, which was very difficult until now."
(Shen 在上個月在台灣台北舉辦的美國地球物理學會西太平洋地球物理會議中說:"在過
去幾年內，高解析的全球模型增進我們這數十年了解風暴背後的物理機制及與大氣間交
互作用的速度。" "直到現在，我們仍然很難在全球模式中看到風暴的物理機制，例如
降水釋放熱能及大氣環境的變化。")
Related Links:
http://atmospheres.gsfc.nasa.gov/
About NASA's Laboratory for Atmospheres
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/
About NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Resources/Systems/pleiades.html
About NASA's Pleiades Supercomputer
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/main/index.html
NASA's Hurricane Resource Page
Gretchen Cook-Anderson
NASA's Earth Science News Team
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