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Visualization of fluctuating pressure measurements affecting the Space Launch System during a wind tunnel test to simulate the launch of the rocket
09.13.23 - NASA Ames Data Processing Software Receives Honorable Mention
NASA management has announced that the Unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint (uPSP) Data Processing Software received an honorable mention in the 2023 NASA Software of the Year Award competition. Developed by several teams across NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley—including visualization and aerodynamics experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division—the uPSP software is a collection of applications that processes raw data from wind tunnel-based testing systems.
Visualization of Hurricane Idalia at landfall
09.13.23 Hurricane Idalia at Landfall: August 30, 2023, at 7:30am EDT
The Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) atmospheric modeling and assimilation system produces daily forecasts capturing the landfall of Idalia within miles of the actual landfall of the storm days in advance. GEOS runs four times per day at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Visualization of synthetic snowflakes
08.30.23 - NCCS Enables Realistic Simulations of Melting Snowflakes to Better Understand Rainstorms and Estimate Rainfall
Although we most notice snow when it hits the ground, snow is also present in the upper levels of rainstorms and melts into rain as it falls through the atmosphere. The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) is enabling complex, realistic simulations of melting snowflakes by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientists.
A close up of a solar eruptive event, including a solar flare, a coronal mass ejection (or CME), and a solar energetic particle event
08.22.23 - NAS Summer Interns Share Science & Engineering Project Results
Students from around the U.S. and Canada wrapped up a three-month NASA summer internship opportunity at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division, presenting results of their projects during two sessions on August 10 and 11, 2023. Interns pursuing undergrad, graduate, and post-doctoral degrees were each matched with NAS Division mentors having expertise in their fields of study.
GPM satellite image of rainstorm over Louisiana
08.22.23 - NCCS and EIS Enable Research on Flood Monitoring and Forecasting, Human Impacts on Louisiana Flooding — and Eventually, Across the Globe
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center research scientist Augusto Getirana and colleagues are leveraging NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) and NASA Earth Information System (EIS) resources to study massive flooding in Louisiana and develop techniques to measure the effects of climate-induced hydrological change, water management, and sea level rise.
Map of North and South America showing global change in a measure called ‘fire weather index’
08.10.23 - NASA Study Reveals Compounding Climate Risks at Two Degrees of Warming
A NASA-led study showed that if global temperatures keep rising and reach 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, people worldwide could face multiple impacts of climate change simultaneously. NASA High-End Computing resources hosted climate modeling and data distribution employed in the study.
Image from a simulation of the Sun’s interior showing the structure of the Prendergast magnetic field
08.07.23 - Shining a Light on the Sun’s Magnetic Field
Researchers at Northwestern University ran simulations of the Sun and other stars on the Pleiades cluster at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility and made some discoveries that help answer questions about how magnetic fields develop and travel to the surface—leading to clues about how they influence the Sun’s atmosphere and Earth’s magnetic shield.
Snapshot of sea surface current velocity near Indonesia
08.01.23 - Sea Surface Currents and Salinity Near the Maritime Continent
NASA High-End Computing resources enabled a modeling study of the Indonesian Throughflow, the only low-latitude gateway for export of large amounts of heat and freshwater from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. The Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) atmospheric model coupled with Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation (MITgcm) ocean model was run for 14 months at a horizontal resolution of ~6–7 kilometers (km) for the atmosphere and ~2–4 km for the ocean to better resolve the flow through these narrow passages.
Image of NASA's new, 250 meter-per-pixel resolution topographic map of Mercury's south pole
07.25.23 - NCCS-Hosted Analysis Sheds New Light on Mercury’s South Pole
Harnessing NASA MESSENGER spacecraft data and NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) cloud computing resources, scientists from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and collaborating organizations have created the first high-resolution topographic map of Mercury’s south pole.
Portion of U.S. map showing surface ozone anomalies for May 2023
07.21.23 - Ozone Extremes Over the U.S. Tracked by NASA’s Composition Forecasting System
The NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office’s Goddard Earth Observing System Composition Forecasting (GEOS-CF) system captured extreme levels of surface ozone that posed a risk to millions of people and thousands of acres of crops in the Midwest U.S. this May. GEOS-CF runs daily at the NCCS.
Map showing Hazardous Spring Forecast Experiment for the eastern U.S.
07.18.23 - Severe Weather Modeling Gets a Boost from NAS Optimization Experts
Scientists in NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office used the Aitken supercomputer to run their 2023 Hazardous Spring Forecast Experiment, which evaluates different ways to model severe weather over the continental U.S. Application optimization experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division provided extensive, customized “concierge service” throughout the three-month project to ensure its success.
Portion of skymap for exoplanet observations
07.17.23 - NASA Summer Series: Chasing Shadows in the Night: How NASA’s Kepler and TESS Missions Are Revolutionizing Exoplanet Science
Mark your calendar to hear NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division Research Scientist Jon Jenkins present “Chasing Shadows in the Night: How NASA’s Kepler and TESS Missions Are Revolutionizing Exoplanet Science” on July 25 at 11:00am Pacific Time. During his talk, Jenkins will describe how we detect weak transit signatures in noisy transit survey datasets and present some of the most compelling discoveries made so far by Kepler and TESS.
Mosaic of student interns with NASA logo
07.14.23 - Summer Internships at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s CISTO Office Reflect the Mission of the NASA Year of Open Science
As an example of how NASA is helping fulfill both the federal government’s Year of Open Science goals and NASA’s Transform to Open Science mission, the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) is highlighting ten students – two high school students, seven undergraduate students, and one graduate student – working as NASA interns across several groups at the Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in summer 2023.
Visualization of Space Launch System rocket
07.11.23 - NASA Summer Series: NASA’s Use of Supercomputing in the Artemis Program
Mark your calendar! NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division Aerodynamics Engineer Derek Dalle will present, “NASA’s Use of Supercomputing in the Artemis Program,” on July 13 at 11 a.m. Pacific Time, as part of the 2023 NASA Summer Series. Dalle will share some ways that NASA groups use computational modeling to support space exploration. The aerodynamics, heating, and acoustics of the ascent and descent phases are the primary focus of Artemis-related supercomputing efforts.
Visualization of NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) data assimilation
07.10.23 - SMAP Radiance Assimilation Over Land Improves GEOS Medium-Range Forecasts of Near-Surface Air Temperature and Humidity
Leveraging the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) researchers ran retrospective experiments for boreal summer 2017 assimilating L-band brightness temperature observations over land from the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite mission into the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS).
Photo of Anastasia Romanou at NASA GISS
06.30.23 - NASA Physical Oceanographer Anastasia Romanou Leads a Group at GISS Studying the Interactions Between Earth’s Oceans and Climate
To honor World Ocean Month and discover how NASA scientists are helping us better understand the world’s oceans in a changing climate, the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) interviewed Anastasia Romanou, a NASA scientist who has for decades developed and used some of the most advanced models of the complex Earth system.
Photo of hazy sky over trees
06.23.23 - Exceptional Wildfire Smoke Across Canada Inundates the Northeastern United States
Warm and dry conditions throughout boreal Canada in early spring of 2023 led to enhanced fire weather conditions and an early start to the biomass burning season. NASA's GEOS Forward Processing (FP) model and assimilation system provides forecasts of aerosol optical depth and particulate matter and can be used to demonstrate why forecasts of smoke can be challenging due to the truly interdisciplinary aspects of aerosol forecasting. GEOS FP runs four times per day at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Suspended sediment and late summer phytoplankton blooms color the Gulf of Alaska in this composite of MODIS and VIIRS satellite instrument data collected on August 28, 2018
06.16.23 - NCCS-Enabled Data Assimilation Probes Impact of Pacific Ocean Heatwaves on Phytoplankton Populations
In a first-of-its-kind study, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientists used the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Discover supercomputer to combine ocean data and modeling to assess how recent heatwave events affected phytoplankton populations in the open Pacific Ocean.
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06.14.23 - Apply Now for the NASA GPU Hackathon: Deadline July 14
Consider applying to participate in the 2023 NASA GPU Hackathon to be held on September 12 and September 19–21. Whether your code is a traditional high-performance computing-centric application or if your goal focuses on artificial intelligence/machine learning technologies, please apply to participate in this event!
Visualization of rotorcraft
06.08.23 - NAS Division Experts Present Latest Findings at 2023 Aviation Forum
Aeronautics experts in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division are presenting their latest research results to aviation professionals from around the world at the 2023 Aviation Forum, June 12–16 in San Diego, CA. From advanced air mobility and low-boom flight simulations to new computational fluid dynamics techniques, NAS aero teams’ work reflects this year’s conference theme, "Revolutionary Leaps Toward a New Age of Aviation."
Photo of the town Namche Bazaar in northeastern Nepal, near the mountain Kongde Ri within the Himalayas
05.31.23 - NASA Supercomputer Enables Seasonal Forecasts for High Mountain Asia
Using forecasts run on a NCCS supercomputer, scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; the University of California, Berkeley; and the Korea National University of Transportation assessed the ability of NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System Subseasonal to Seasonal Version 2 (GEOS-S2S-2) forecasting system to predict atmospheric and land surface conditions throughout the High Mountain Asia region.
Map showing southern hemisphere monthly sea ice fraction for January 2023
05.25.23 - A New Minimum in Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent
According to the MERRA-2 reanalysis running at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), the sea ice cover surrounding Antarctica reached its seasonal low of just under 1.8 million square kilometers on February 19, 2023.
A photo of participants in Hinners Auditorium at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, site of NASA's 3rd Annual AI/ML Workshop in March 2023
05.19.23 - NASA Goddard Hosts Third Cross-Agency Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Data Science
To better prepare NASA to leap into an exciting future leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and Engineering and Technology Directorate (ETD) hosted a hybrid, three-day conference, the Third SMD and ETD Workshop on A.I. and Data Science: Leaping Toward Our Future Goals, on March 21–23, 2023 at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Photo of Randy Koster
05.02.23 - Randy Koster: Modeling the Ways of Water
NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) scientist and long-time NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) user Randy Koster talks about his work modeling land-surface processes and analyzing their interactions with the rest of the climate system.
Visualization of Orion spacecraft
04.28.23 - CFD Simulations in Space Answer Big Questions
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations have been used in the aerospace industry for decades to create lightweight designs, improve aerodynamics, reduce friction during high velocity scenarios like reentry and much more. NASA and its partners are using CFD for bleeding-edge aerospace research, including CFD studies for missions to go back to the Moon, with Space Launch System simulations run on supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility.
Photo of Cray supercomputer with NASA Supercomputers label and THG logo
04.26.23 - The History Guy: A History of NASA's Supercomputers
While we often take the enormous amount of computing power at our fingertips for granted, it was the predecessors to our ubiquitous machines that first changed the world, quickly making things once thought impossible commonplace. One of the places where those enormous changes were done was at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, home today to the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division.


Photo of thick smog blanketing buildings and a road in New Delhi, India
04.26.23 - Simulations Probe the Impacts of Air Pollution on Premature Deaths
Models from Aarhus University (AU) in Denmark and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City and supercomputers at AU and NASA worked in concert to study the impact of air pollution on premature mortality — both globally and regionally — under several emission and population scenarios.
Visualization of X-59 aircraft in virtual wind tunnel
04.21.23 - Supercomputers Aid Quesst Researchers in Predicting X-59’s Sound
Before the X-59 flies, NASA researchers are getting ahead of the curve by using computational fluid dynamics to create what is, essentially, a virtual wind tunnel showing incredible aerodynamic detail. They use a sophisticated tool called Cart3D at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility.
Visualization of sea surface velocity in the Atlantic Ocean
04.21.23 - Celebrating Our Ocean World at NASA in Silicon Valley
This Earth Day, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley asked researchers studying our planet to share what excites them about Earth science and explain how they’re working to better understand, predict, and protect Earth’s life-sustaining water systems. Nina McCurdy, Data Visualization Scientist in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division highlights how supercomputers and complex visualization are helping an international group of scientists run complex ocean and atmospheric circulation models.
Map of North America visualizing the organic and black carbon portion of the GEOS-CF total particulate matter
04.18.23 - Health Impacts from Wildfires in 2021 Over North America
NASA’s GEOS atmospheric composition forecast system (GEOS-CF) estimated pollutants carried by smoke from summer 2021 wildfires in western North America. GEOS-CF runs a five-day global forecast daily at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Photo of storm clouds over a road
04.13.23 - New Look at Climate Data Shows Substantially Wetter Rain and Snow Days Ahead
Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report that extremely intense days of rain or snow will be more frequent by the end of this century than previously thought. The NASA High-End Computing Capability (HECC) Project provided resources supporting this work through the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX), Earth Science Division, and the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center.
Visualization of (top) compound chlorophyll and sea surface temperature anomalies and (bottom) phytoplankton group dominanc
04.11.23 - Impact of Pacific Ocean Heatwaves on Phytoplankton Community Composition
Leveraging NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) computing resources, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center researchers assimilated satellite ocean color data into an ocean biogeochemical model to describe changes in the abundance of phytoplankton functional types during the last decade’s (2010s) warm anomalies in the equatorial and northeastern Pacific Ocean.
Visualization of asteroid impact scenario
04.06.23 - This is What Would Happen if Scientists Found an Asteroid Heading to Earth
In support of NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Program Office, a team of NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division scientists working on the Asteroid Threat Assessment Project presented a hypothetical asteroid impact scenario at the 8th Planetary Defence Conference in Vienna, Austria this week. Space.com's Robert Lea captured their efforts to better calculate the size of the asteroid and build an asteroid impact risk assessment model that considers many factors, from limited observational data.
Image of a coronal mass ejection emerging from the Sun
03.29.23 - NCCS-Hosted Simulations Validate New Method of Simulating Solar Processes that Birth Space Weather
The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Discover supercomputer hosted simulations validating a new, computationally efficient method for capturing the complex magnetic processes that spawn coronal mass ejections and other space weather phenomena.
Concept image of exoplanet and star
03.24.23 - The Soul of Music: Meklit Hadero Tells Stories of Migration
In National Geographic’s podcast "The Soul of Music," jazz musician Meklit Hadero explains how she incorporates sounds of nature into her music, including sonifications of starlight data that came in through NASA's Kepler Telescope. The sonifications were created by the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division’s Jon Jenkins, Kepler Mission Analysis Lead. The data was processed through a science data pipeline on the Pleiades supercomputer.
Visualization of integrated vapor transport from an atmospheric river in the Pacific Ocean
03.20.23 - Precipitation Inundates California
Less than one month after severe flooding, another series of North Pacific cyclones carried a wave of tropical moisture into California with similar consequences. The details were captured by the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office's GEOS analysis run at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Photo of Chelsea Parker
03.14.23 - To Celebrate Women’s History Month, NCCS Spotlights the Career of Dr. Chelsea Parker from NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory
To honor and celebrate Women's History Month, this story focuses on the unique journey of one of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s most versatile, adventurous, high-energy, and hard-working research scientists, Dr. Chelsea Parker — in her own words. Parker uses NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) high-performance computing resources to study the atmosphere and ice in polar regions.
Image of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa
03.13.23 - Study Finds Ocean Currents May Affect Rotation of Europa’s Icy Crust
NASA scientists have strong evidence that Jupiter’s moon Europa has an internal ocean under its icy outer shell. New computer modeling run at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility suggests the water may actually be pushing the ice shell along, possibly speeding up and slowing down the rotation of the moon’s icy shell over time.
Visualization showing water cycle extremes in South America (part of a global map)
03.13.23 - Warming Makes Droughts, Extreme Wet Events More Frequent, Intense
Scientists have predicted that droughts and floods will become more frequent and severe as our planet warms and climate changes, but detecting this on regional and continental scales has proven difficult. Now a new NASA-led study leveraging the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) confirms that major droughts and pluvials – periods of excessive precipitation and water storage on land – have indeed been occurring more often.
Cross-section of the Sun during and after flare heating
03.13.23 - NJIT Student Unveils Shock Sunquake Discoveries at SC22 NASA Exhibit
NJIT Ph.D. physics student John Stefan presented new findings about earthquake-like events on the Sun that have recently shaken up the world of space science during one of the biggest international conferences for high-performance computing of the year — the SC22 Supercomputing Conference.
Visualization of a Transonic Truss Braced Wing aircraft concept
03.09.23 - A Future Aircraft Design, Supercomputed
The NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Facility hosted virtual wind tunnel simulations of a Transonic Truss Braced Wing aircraft concept, which contains advancements in technology with the potential to improve fuel efficiency for commercial aircraft.
Image of Modeling & Simulation Datasets button
03.07.23 - New Features in NAS Data Portal Improve Knowledge Sharing
The NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Data Portal was recently updated to accommodate a growing number of shared datasets — including helio`g various aspects of the Sun. In 2022 alone, researchers downloaded 250 terabytes of data provided by users via the Portal.
Visualization of total precipitable water over California during an atmospheric river event
03.06.23 - GMAO Highlights Atmospheric River Precipitation and Inflatable Decelerator Tests
Recent NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) Science Snapshots highlight atmospheric rivers bringing unusually heavy precipitation to California and forecast support for NASA’s Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID), work enabled by the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS).
Photo of a scientist measuring the circumference of a tree
03.01.23 - Published in Nature - NASA-Funded Scientists Estimate Carbon Stored in African Dryland Trees
NASA Earth scientist Compton Tucker and his global team’s research is highlighted on the March 2 cover of Nature. To assess the surprising amount of carbon stored in Africa’s semi-arid regions, the researchers acquired commercial, high-res images of 10 billion trees through the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) and leveraged the Explore/ADAPT Science Cloud at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to organize and prepare the images for machine learning processing.
Map illustrating the rapid onset of evaporative stress changes in the northern Great Plains of the United States
02.28.23 - The SMCE-Built NASA Earth Information System (EIS) Cloud Computing Platform Enables the Analysis of Flash Droughts
NASA Research Scientist Dr. Shahryar Ahmad and colleagues used NASA’s Earth Information System cloud computing platform — hosted in the NASA High-End Computing Program’s Science-Managed Cloud Environment — to conduct research on flash droughts in the northern Great Plains.
Photo of Hamid Oloso
02.16.23 - Celebrating Black History Month – NCCS User Spotlight: Hamid Oloso
Joining NASA’s Black History Month celebration, this spotlight shines on NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) user Dr. Hamid Oloso. We follow Oloso from his childhood and university years in Nigeria to his current role as a computational scientist in the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
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02.02.23 - Results from the NASA GPU Hackathon 2022
During the NASA GPU Hackathon 2022, teams from three NASA centers and academic institutions brought a varie
ty of computationally intensive applications and applied high-performance computing and machine-learning techniques to speed up code performance. Check out the success stories from the event, held in September 2022.
A farmer applies organic fertilizer to his maize crop.
01.25.23 - NCCS Explore/ADAPT Science Cloud Enables Machine Learning-Based Crop Type and Yield Estimates in Burkina Faso, West Africa
The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Explore/ADAPT Science Cloud enabled NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientists and collaborators to leverage machine learning models and satellite data to predict crop type and yields in Burkina Faso, West Africa.
Computer networks over a globe
01.04.23 - Merging Edge Devices and AI with Supercomputing Climate Simulations
Daniel Duffy, chief of the Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office and the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, describes how NASA's use of AI and machine learning has accelerated in recent years to bridge data gaps and speed solutions.
Visualization of the polar vortex
01.03.23 - Stratospheric Ozone Forecasts are Realistic When Using the Chemical Mechanism in the GEOS-CF System
The GEOS Composition Forecast (GEOS-CF) system, running at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), provides global near-real-time 5-day forecasts of atmospheric composition. Among others, a GEOS-CF forecast was verified to be in good agreement with NASA’s daily observation-based Ozone Watch analysis of total column ozone that decreases over the 5-day forecast.

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