Atmospheric and Environmental Research [AER] announced today that CSC selected their firm to provide science and software support for NOAA weather and climate modeling efforts. The efforts associated with NOAA’s Research and Development High Performance Computing System [RDHPCS] contract was recently awarded to a team led by CSC. The indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract has a four-year base period, one four-year option, and one one-year transition option, bringing the estimated contract value to $317 million if all options are exercised. The first year will be funded at $49.3 million by NOAA using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
We look forward to working with Atmospheric and Environmental Research on this critical initiative enabling NOAA to be able to produce more accurate and agile environmental models helping the nation better understand how the earth’s climate is changing, and to share computing resources across the agency and its research partners,” said Mike Gaffney, president of CSC’s North American Public Sector Civil and Health Services Group. “We selected AER because the importance of preserving the computational integrity of NOAA’s climate and weather models cannot be overstated.”
We’re looking forward to working with CSC on this critical NOAA initiative. This effort enables NOAA to provide more robust modeling and analysis of the earth’s weather and climate which will contribute to the nation’s ability to assess and manage the impact of climate change,” said Ron Isaacs, executive vice president, Atmospheric and Environmental Research.
AER’s primary role is to provide numerical weather prediction and climate model science algorithm expertise. AER will work with CSC software engineers to help ensure the integrity of the NOAA weather and climate model products as they are migrated to the more robust high-performance computing system. This is quite a mighty task considering the breadth and depth of both the systems, science and software involved with the RDHPCS contract.
For more info, check out the AER homepage here.