According to the Austin Stateman, TACC’s Ranger supercomputer has recently been tasked by two weather research teams to make detailed forecasts and high-resolution studies of this season’s hurricanes affecting the US.  The models are really beginning to stike a chord as 165 miles southwest, Houston is still feeling the effects of Hurricane Ike.

They are using a huge amount of computer horsepower,” said [Karl Shulz,associate director of TACC] , who said using the new models to crunch through storm data can use as much as two-thirds of Ranger’s computer capacity over a period of several hours.

Ranger is also support research on a coastal storm surge model that is being driven by UT scientists.

There is an interesting feel (to the storm-related work) because it is involved with stuff that has an immediate tieback,” Schulz said. “A lot of the stuff we work on its very fundamental long-term research. This is very applied and very near-term. There are NOAA Web sites running the answers coming out of Ranger.”

For more info on the research, read the full article here.