A 3-day long simulation provides unprecedented detail of one of the largest super-storms in history
Tornadoes are a singularly devastating force of nature -- a natural phenomenon that occurs about a thousand times each year in the United States itself, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA.) While tornadoes are known to happen across the globe, their sheer potency and frequency across the American continent makes it important for scientists to learn more about them, in an effort to preempt and prepare for their after effects.
One of the precedents of a tornado is a natural phenomenon known as a supercell, which is a deep, rotating updraft in the atmosphere. It is a condition that can spawn one or more high-intensity tornadoes that can often achieve wind speeds in excess of 200 Km/h. The force of these super storms is immense enough to upturn cars and rip out houses from their foundations, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake.
To attain a clearer picture of what goes on inside these tornadoes, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently simulated one of the most powerful storms to hit the United states in recent history: a storm that hit Oklahoma on 24 May 2011.
To deal with the vastness of data points that comprise such a storm -- from wind speed to atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, and precipitation in the form of rain, hail or snow -- the scientists turned to a supercomputer at the University of Illinois called ‘Blue Waters’.
The storm under study, which was spread over a 190 square kilometer area, was diced into about 1.8 billion individual cubical chunks (some representing blocks barely 100 feet on each side.) All of the three-dimensional factors that went into the creation of this massive storm were processed by the supercomputer’s 20,000 processing cores. At the end of the three-day computational run, the supercomputer generated perhaps one of the most detailed simulations of a storm ever created. In doing so, it has delivered the kind of unprecedented detail that has until now eluded meteorologists.
"For the first time, we've been able to peer into the inner workings of a supercell that produces a tornado," Orf said, in a statement to Engadget. "We have the full storm, and we can see everything going on inside of it."
Modeling such expansive and complex natural phenomena using supercomputers is proving to be an excellent method of understanding the underlying factors that cause and propagate these occurrences.
Watch the complete, fascinating simulation here:
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