Supercomputers are used to predict the weather-英语听力

[00:00.10]From VOA Learning English, [00:00.73]this is the Technology Report. [00:03.62]Many Americans start to closely follow weather reports [00:07.90]in the early fall. [00:09.69]During the Atlantic hurricane season, [00:11.94]predicting the strength and movement of [00:15.47]these huge storm systems is of crucial importance. [00:20.16]Thanks to new supercomputers, [00:22.56]meteorologists for the National Oceanic [00:26.59]and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) [00:28.58]are getting better at predicting the weather [00:31.82]as far as six days out. [00:34.56]Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast last October, [00:39.40]and caused deaths and widespread damage, [00:43.78]it was one of the costliest storm in U.S. history. [00:49.02]At the time, some people blamed meteorologists [00:53.50]for not correctly predicting the path of the storm. [00:57.64]But weather forecasting is extremely difficult, says Ben Kyger. [01:03.61]He is the Director of Central Operations [01:06.74]at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction [01:11.07]in College Park, Maryland. [01:13.32]"You’ve got major patterns in the atmosphere, [01:16.61]like the jet stream, [01:18.25]but you’ve also got little eddies, little currents, [01:21.33]little things happening all over the place. [01:23.72]All these little changes are interacting with each other, [01:27.31]continuously, all day long. [01:28.55]So if you look at it from above, from a satellite, [01:31.25]you see the atmosphere moving [01:33.04]and churning in big ways and little ways." [01:35.73]Ben Kyger says oceans are another issue [01:39.51]because they closely interact with the atmosphere [01:43.44]and have a huge effect on storms. [01:46.97]NOAA has spent about $20 million on two new supercomputers, [01:53.80]in an effort to improve the dependability of the forecasts. [01:58.93]"These computers generate the initial model guidance [02:02.86]that the whole forecast process depends on, [02:05.50]for all the weather information that you see, [02:08.49]with snowstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, [02:12.17]how hot it’s going to be today [02:14.12]— all of your weather forecasts start [02:16.22]with what comes off of these supercomputers." [02:19.51]It takes a huge amount of computational power [02:22.80]to examine data from weather satellites, [02:26.64]ground stations and other sources. [02:30.02]It then take a lot of power to predict temperature, [02:34.16]air pressure, humidity and wind speed. [02:37.99]But human brains and experience [02:41.24]are still very important to the process. [02:44.02]Meteorologists at the National Centers [02:47.71]for Environmental Prediction scan the same data [02:51.74]that the supercomputers get before issuing a weather report. [02:56.24]"They are looking at lots of different models run of different computers, [03:00.73]and then they are creating that five-day forecast. [03:05.12]They use lots of scientific and subjective knowledge [03:09.01]from doing it year after year. [03:10.85]They know where the models are strong, where they’re weak [03:13.88]and they give us significantly better forecasts [03:16.98]than the models would do by themselves." [03:19.02]NOAA issues worldwide forecasts every six hours every day of the year. [03:26.05]The reports are free and are helpful for many countries [03:32.27]that cannot afford their own weather service. [03:35.85]NOAA continues working to improve its weather-forecasting abilities, [03:40.93]another upgrade of its weather-predicting supercomputers [03:45.11]is planed for as earlier as 2015. [03:49.39]And that is the Technology Report from VOA Learning English. [03:55.27]I'm June Simms.