Transcript Consortium10062011.ppt

Consortium Meeting
10/6/2011
Major Side News: Langley Hill Radar
Langley Hill Radar Operational
• Fully operational INCLUDING dual-pol
capability. Note: all of our regional radars will
be dual-pol soon.
• Extraordinary view offshore and over the
coastal zone
• Now seeing things 200-250 miles offshore.
• Will get dual-pol graphics online in next two
weeks
Radar
• One major enhancement left on Nov 1: zero
degree elevation angle (or close to it). Much
more range and MUCH better low-level
coverage.
• This year will will begin assimilating the
Langley Radar (and others) into our regional
data assimilation system.
Web Access Issues
Hits
Data
Web Server is Bogging Down
• The department web server is bogging down
under an increased load.
• Has occasionally caused degradation in access
times for WRF model products
• The Department is going to substantially
upgrade the server and will pay for it (this is
where the indirect costs go).
Personnel Issues
• Phil Regulski has left for the private sector ($$$
issues) a few weeks ago. Virtually no warning.
• Mark Albright has increased his hours to take
over Phil’s tasks for model interface/graphics
issues.
• Jeff Baars took over Seattle applications
• Dave Ovens has taken over baby sitting the realtime EnKF system.
• Short-handed now and will have to deal with
that.
Items Completed Since Last Meeting
• The point and click,
random selection
capability, is operational
for meteograms,
soundings, and timeheights. Takes roughly
20 seconds to come up.
• Will add 1.3 km when it
is stabilized
Major Upgrade This Summer
• Added three new nodes (24 processors) and
expanded the 1.3 km half-way to Missoula
Major Upgrade 1
• Big problems. There was an incompatibility in
the infiniband cards on the new nodes with
those on the old nodes.
• Had to return the motherboards and exchange
for identical ones as the old machines with
onboard infiniband. Big pain.
• Problem was eventually solved with new cards
and new domain went operational during the
summer (0630).
Improvements
• Dropped terrain smoothing when we found
another way to insure stability of 4/3 km
runs—sound wave averaging option. (Had
been smoothing the most severe terrain
where we had the problems).
• Added air quality page for 4/3 km resolution.
Striation Problem Fix
Striations in precipitation were found in the SW part of the domain
Striation Problem
• Confirmed by the WRF folks.
• Turns out it originated in the new Kain-Fritsch
convective scheme with shallow cumulus.
• Tested the old Kain-Fritsch and new Grell
convective scheme…problem went away and
everything else looked similar.
• Switch to old KF on August 30.
Major Upgrade (2)
• Ready for the push of the 4/3 km to Missoula.
• Also moving the 4/3 farther out into the Pacific to
alleviate problems with the boundary being too close
to the WA coast.
• Also increased the 12 and 4-km domains to allow this.
• Have added 4 new 12-core nodes. Total processors
that we will run is 136 (11x8 + 4x12). Not long ago we
were running 30-40 processors!
• The new units are working well and scaling—timing
should be very similar to current smaller domain.
March 11
July 11
October 11
Major Lesson: Need to get upstream boundary away from our areas of interest
New 1.3 km domain
Land Mask
Land Use
Terrain
Some Examples
Major coastal
improvements
Much Better Coverage for W. Entrance
to the Strait
New RAID data server
• We are rapidly running out of space with new graphics and
the HUGE new domain.
• Purchased a new data server and will install as soon as 4/3
km domain is stable next week.
• Also does graphics generation.
• Dual 6-core xeons with 48 gig of ram. We bought it with 12
2-TB drives running raid 6 for a total of 20TB usable space
and dual-disk failure redundancy. It is expandable to 36
drives -> 34x2 or 68TB possible.
• It also has a spare raid card as a backup and infiniband.
• When this is up we will go forward with the graphics
upgrades everyone wanted (some have been done though).
Next Steps
• OK to initiate expansion?
• WSU and others ready for changes in 12, 4,
and 1.3 km domains?
• Next new RAID array.
• Next new dept web server.
• Next new graphics for 1.3 km and expansion
of random selection to 1.3 km
• Addition of radar to EnKF.
Example other items
• SNOWWATCH close to being ready to go.
The END