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2004 SCIENCE NEWS
11.01.04 - NAS Supercomputer Improves Estimates of Ocean Climate
Researchers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility have teamed up with scientists from the consortium for Estimating the Climate and Circulation of the Ocean (ECCO) to dramatically accelerate the development of a highly accurate analysis of the global-ocean and sea-ice circulations.
The ECCO team produces time-evolving, three-dimensional estimates of the state of the ocean and of sea-ice. These estimates are obtained by incorporating into a numerical model, vast amounts of data such as sea level, current speed, surface temperature, and salinity, which are gathered from instruments in the ocean and from space satellites like NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon and JASON.
Scientists use these realistic, time-evolving estimates as a practical tool to better understand how the ocean currents affect Earth's climate, to study the role of the ocean in the earths uptake of carbon dioxide, and to more accurately predict events like El NinTilDeo and global warming.
By using the NAS facility's most powerful supercomputers, researchers now get results in a few weeks that previously would have taken several years to obtain. The NAS team also supports the ECCO project by solving technical issues such as data transfer and storage, and has developed new methods to allow scientists to visualize their results.
Ames Research Center, with its partners at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are continuing to make major strides in this pathfinding project.
The ECCO consortium was formed under the National Oceanographic Partnership Program, with funding from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Office of Naval Research. More information about the NAS-ECCO collaboration is available at http://ecco.jpl.nasa.gov/cube_sphere
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