The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has completed installation of two new IBM supercomputers that will greatly enhance the accuracy of weather forecasts, and provide earlier warnings for hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods, tsunamis, and winter storms.

The supercomputers are capable of 69.7 trillion calculations per second, and are the final part of a nine-year, $180 million contract. NOAA said the faster the calculation speeds, the greater the chances that meteorologists can rapidly update severe weather forecasts as dangerous weather affects local communities.

Billions of bytes are entered into the supercomputers each day to help predict the weather more accurately. The new supercomputers, based on IBM Power 575 Systems, are four times faster than the previous system.

"This new technology will provide us with more sophisticated models of the Earth's land, ocean and atmosphere, giving meteorologists better accuracy and precision in both long-term and short-term forecasting," Jack Hayes, director of NOAA's National Weather Service, said in a statement. "More accurate weather forecasts allow the National Weather Service to warn individual citizens and whole communities about impending dangerous weather well in advance so they can take action to protect lives and property."

For more on NOAA's supercomputers:
- see this eWeek article