It was thirteen months ago that the Congress approved more money to help the National Weather Service improve its forecasting computer backbone, but a top federal official on Wednesday could not give an estimate to lawmakers as to when the U.S. would finally upgrade its weather model supercomputer, which seems to be falling behind some of its worldwide competition.
"We're on good track to come up to par with the Europeans," said National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration chief Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, referring to the European Center weather model, which is regarded by many as the top weather forecasting product worldwide.
"Our performance has lagged behind them on certain weather events, but certainly not on all weather events," said Sullivan at a House hearing.
But when asked what is holding up the purchase of a new U.S. supercomputer upgrade, Sullivan had no concrete answer for why a purchase order hasn't been sent yet to IBM, which has the NOAA computer contract.
"It is something that the Treasury Department is tracking closely," Sullivan said, referring to worries about IBM's dealing with the Chinese computer firm Lenovo, an alliance that has U.S. regulators reviewing impacts on a possible weather supercomputer upgrade through IBM.
But while Sullivan expressed confidence that the U.S. would regain its lead in computer weather modeling, lawmakers weren't so sure - and they pointedly told the NOAA chief, whose agency oversees the National Weather Service.
"The European weather models routinely predict American weather better than we can," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX).
The latest figures do show the European Center model leads the pack in accuracy, followed by the British UKMET model, then the CMC from Canada.
And in fourth place in terms of recent weather forecast accuracy, is the GFS model from the United States.
Asked about that fourth place showing, which was detailed by a University of Washington meteorology professor, Sullivan didn't take the bait at the hearing.
"I haven't seen it, so I wouldn't wish to comment on it," Sullivan told lawmakers.
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