Almost exactly ten years ago , NASA ’s model showed Hurricane Katrina approaching the slide of Louisiana . At the time , most model had a declaration of 50 kilometers . Today it ’s down to justa little over 6 kilometers .
Yes , our satellites have change dramatically since 2005 ( along with the rest of our world ) , as NASA points outin a fascinating post today . But not only has the resolution been bumped up exponentially by newfangled satellites , but the data processor we use to analyse that data has also gotten more powerful . Meanwhile , NASA has launched multiple programme to study how hurricane become weakly ( or stronger ) over sentence , the results of which further sharpen the truth of our weather models .
So just how much more gamy - def are our foretelling today ? To demonstrate , NASA has done a side - by - side comparison of the some of the information we had in 2005 , versus 2015 . Take this comparison of the water vapor . The first image shows Katrina at a resolution of 50 kilometer , versus a manikin yield by NASA ’s current Goddard Earth Observing System mode , resolution 6.25 km :

And here ’s a similar comparison of wind hurrying :
Again , it ’s not just about the hardware up in compass . It ’s about the processing power behind the satellites , and the supercomputer the agency practice to analyse it . Keep in intellect — these planet are send back one thousand thousand of piece of information every Clarence Shepard Day Jr. .
Recording so much data is one matter . Turning it into useable models and predictions that entire realm calculate on ? That ’s quite another . Back in 2010 , NASAannounced a major upgradeto the models it employ to march weather data , under a new championship : theCenter for Climate Simulation . At the clip NASA sound out it must parse 8 million observations every daytime ( a number that has surely gone up in the five years since ) , and to do it , it introduced a supercomputer call Discover equal to of show a weather condition model at a resolution ofjust 3.5 kilometers .

As of this winter , the supercomputer has more than 45,000 processor cores and run at 1.995 petfalops , NASA says .
NASA / Goddard / Bill Hrybyk .
decently now , Hurricane Danny isbrewing in the Atlantic , with others certainly to number . The exponential sharpening of NASA ’s example and new observations about hurricane behavior are contributing the information points to predict where it will set down . And it ’ll be interesting to see , over the next ten years , how much sharper the resolving on our storm science can get .

meet the writer at[email protected ] .
earth scienceKatrinaWeather
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