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Simulation of the Artemis I launch showing how the Space Launch System rocket's exhaust plumes interact with the air, water, and the launchpad
11.15.24 - Six Ways Supercomputing Advances Our Understanding of the Universe
At NASA, high-end computing is essential for many agency missions. This technology helps us advance our understanding of the universe – from our planet to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Projects across diverse research will be on display in NASA’s exhibit during the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, or SC24, being held in Atlanta, Nov. 17-22, 2024.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, left, and Kirk Johnson, Sant director, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, observe the new Earth Information Center exhibit at the Museum of Natural History
10.09.24 - GMAO Content Featured in New NASA EIC Exhibit at Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History
NASA has teamed up with the Smithsonian to launch a new Earth Information Center exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Hyperwall dashboards feature a number of Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) datasets, including greenhouse gas concentrations, air quality, and weather conditions, computed at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation.
Planet LP 791-18 d dominates this artist’s concept. The planet is illuminated on the right side and in shadow on the left. Its mottled brown surface has several bright yellow spots where volcanoes are erupting. These bright spots are connected by jagged veins of bright red lava.
09.26.24 - NCCS-Hosted Simulations Enable Exploring Prospects of Detecting Volcanic Signatures on ExoEarths
The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) enabled University of California, Riverside, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientists to simulate how large igneous province volcanic eruptions — some of the most massive in Earth’s history — affect the planet’s climate and atmospheric chemistry. The simulation data then served to define the atmosphere of a hypothetical rocky Earth-like exoplanet (or exoEarth) for exploring the possibility of detecting volcanic signatures with future space telescopes.
Graph showing daily, global mean 2 m temperature for 2024 (red) compared to the climatological mean (thick black line), 15th percentile, 85th percentile (gray shading), and minimum and maximum temperature (thin black lines) for the period of 1980 through 2023
09.25.24 - GMAO Science Snapshots Explore Dust to Ocean Life
Enabled by the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) advanced understanding of Saharan dust transport, record global air temperatures, and Chlorophyll-A in the oceans.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center logo
08.28.24 - CISTO Summer 2024 Interns Take on AI and Other Challenges at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA’s “Summer of AI” (Artificial Intelligence) — a season-long learning campaign — “aims to enhance our workforce’s ability to harness the technical and cultural potential of AI.” Summer interns are no exception, with a record 17 interns growing their knowledge and agency capabilities by tackling AI and other technological challenges across the Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office (CISTO) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
A 2019 photo of aerodynamics engineer Thomas Steve and aerospace engineer Nettie Roozeboom viewing data flowing in from a wind tunnel test of the Space Launch System rocket on the hyperwall at NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility.
08.20.24 - NAS Supports Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel, ‘Red Rover’ Team
Earlier this year, the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division’s Research & Development team, in collaboration with the Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel team at NASA’s Ames Research Center, successfully performed initial tests of the Unsteady Pressure Sensitive Paint application for a project called Red Rover—reminiscent of the classic children’s game. .
Section of U.S. map showing weekly helicity tracks overlayed with NWS severe thunderstorm and tornado warning polygons
08.06.24 - GEOS-Exp 2km Highlights Severe Weather Outbreak, Selected for 2024 HWT Forecast Experiment
The NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office's experimental 2-kilometer version of the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model was part of NOAA's 2024 Hazardous Weather Testbed, showcasing the most cutting-edge numerical weather prediction models during the busiest convective weather month. The GEOS model ran on the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Landscape at Murphy Dome fire scar, outside of Fairbanks, Alaska
08.06.24 - Tundra Vegetation to Grow Taller, Greener Through 2100, NASA Study Finds
Warming global climate is changing the vegetation structure of forests in the far north. It’s a trend that will continue at least through the end of this century, according to NASA researchers who analyzed millions of data points from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2) and Landsat missions at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Photo of Cabeus supercomputer at NASA Ames
08.02.24 - NASA Ames to Host Supercomputing Resources for UC Berkeley Researchers
Under a new agreement, NASA will host supercomputing resources for the University of California, Berkeley at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility – the agency’s premiere supercomputing center. The agreement is part of an expanding partnership between Ames and UC Berkeley and will support the development of novel computing algorithms and software for a wide variety of scientific and technology areas.
Map showing global carbon dioxide in parts per million
07.23.24 - Watch Carbon Dioxide Move Through Earth’s Atmosphere
A global map shows concentrations of carbon dioxide as the gas moved through Earth’s atmosphere from January through March 2020, driven by wind patterns and atmospheric circulation. The map was created by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio using a model called GEOS, short for the Goddard Earth Observing System. GEOS is a high-resolution weather model, powered by supercomputers run by NASA High-End Computing.
Ames Center Director Eugene Tu, left, and New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, left, pose in front of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility hyperwall as it displays New Zealand and Earth’s ocean currents
07.18.24 - NASA Ames Welcomes New Zealand Prime Minister, Celebrates Partnership
On July 12, NASA Ames Research Center welcomed the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Christopher Luxon, who was hosted in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility and briefed on Ames' core competences and NASA’s and New Zealand’s collaborative efforts to study Earth’s interconnected systems. The prime minister visited the Pleiades and Cabeus supercomputers and examined the capabilities of the facility’s upgraded hyperwall.
Photo of hyperwall with people silhouettes
07.01.24 - NASA’s Upgraded Hyperwall Offers Improved Data Visualization
In May, the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility, located at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, celebrated the newest generation of its hyperwall system, a wall of LCD screens that display supercomputer-scale visualizations of the very large datasets produced by NASA supercomputers and instruments.
Photograph of Nikki Privé
06.25.24 - Evaluating Proposed Next-Generation Satellite Instruments: Nikki Privé
Continuing our occasional series, this NCCS User Spotlight shines on Dr. Nikki Privé. The quasi-native Marylander currently works as a senior research scientist in the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Visualization of weekly subseasonal GEOS-S2S-2 model forecast for 2m temperature in March 2024
06.13.24 - GEOS Subseasonal-to-Seasonal (S2S) Forecast System Predicts Events in Asia, Africa, and Tropics
The GEOS S2S system predicted events as diverse as the Mongolia Dzud, a Sudan Heat Wave, and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) in the tropics. GEOS S2S runs at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
MERRA-2 aerosol optical depth for July 21, 2012, with a massive dust storm moving off the northwest coast of Africa
05.22.24 - NASA and IBM Research Apply AI to Weather and Climate
A collaboration involving NASA and IBM Research has led to the development of a new artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model for weather and climate: Prithvi-weather-climate (Prithvi is the Sanskrit name for Earth). Participants include NASA High-End Computing’s NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) and NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Facility.
A composite image capturing variations in the Sun's magnetic field over a decade shows varied activity on its surface
05.22.24 - Solution to Ancient Astronomy Puzzle to Aid Solar Storm Warnings
In calculations leveraging NASA's Pleiades supercomputer, an international research team lead by the University of Edinburgh discovered that the dynamo process generating the Sun's magnetic field originates from a relatively close 20,000 miles below the surface.
Visualization shwooing the impact of hypothetical asteroid PDC 2023
05.07.24 - Defending the Planet: How NASA Supercomputers Capture Hypothetical Asteroid Impacts
Supporting the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office, scientists in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division's Computational Aerosciences Branch have kept their eyes close to Earth recently—focusing on what might occur if our planet should someday get hit by an asteroid, and what we might be able to do to mitigate the damage.
Visualization of supermassive black hole
05.06.24 - New NASA Black Hole Visualization Takes Viewers Beyond the Brink
Ever wonder what happens when you fall into a black hole? Now, thanks to a new, immersive visualization produced on the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Discover supercomputer, viewers can plunge into the event horizon, a black hole’s point of no return.
Photograph of Cabeus supercomputer
03.04.24 - Supercomputer Speeds Computations for NASA Research Projects
A new graphics processing unit (GPU)-based supercomputer has been added to the stable of NASA high-end computing resources operated at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility. Named Cabeus after a lunar crater near the Moon’s south pole, the system is already providing agency users with several petaflops of computational power and will increase our capability to run artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads that can benefit from GPU technology.
Cyclone Nargis spirals over the Bay of Bengal between India to the west and Myanmar to the east
02.21.24 - Exploring Past and Future Tropical Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal with NASA High-End Computing
Leveraging NASA High-End Computing resources, a team of NASA and university scientists undertook a study of past and future tropical cyclones in the Bay of Bengal — some of the most devastating natural events on Earth.
Map of potential vorticity at the 850-K potential temperature surface (approximately 30 km above the Earth’s surface) and geopotential height near the tropopause (red contours) on 5 January 2024
02.14.24 - GMAO Science Snapshots Shine Light on El Niño and Sudden Stratospheric Warming
The NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) January 2024 El Niño seasonal forecast predicts a progressive cooling of sea surface temperatures heading into spring and continuing into early autumn while the GMAO numerical weather prediction model depicts a sudden stratospheric warning event in January 2024. GMAO forecasting systems run at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Six ‘sub-Neptune’ exoplanets in rhythmic orbits around their star
01.16.24 - TESS Researchers Discover Six-Planet System Using New Algorithms
An international group of scientists have recently uncovered a remarkable system of six exoplanets from data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Their years of planetary detective work—which began with light curve processing on the Pleiades supercomputer at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility—was detailed in a paper published in Nature.
GEOS-Exp 4km model snowfall forecast with 30-hour snowfall total
01.04.24 - GEOS Model Outputs for Early Season Snowfall in the Northeast US
Model outputs from GEOS-FP 12-kilometer (km) and GEOS-Exp 4-km depict an early season snowfall in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States on December 11, 2023. GEOS models run at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).

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