Wyoming gets supercomputer for climate studies

DENVER — Taxed by increasingly complex requests for climate modeling, the National Center for Atmospheric Research will build a new supercomputer but house it in Wyoming, not near its headquarters in Boulder, Colo.

NCAR officials explained that the huge amounts of comparatively inexpensive electricity and space required for the $500 million computer upgrade are more easily had in Wyoming.

"We need the computing power because the questions people are asking are more difficult," said Lawrence Buja, director of NCAR's climate-science and applications program.

While climate-change modeling once dealt with global scenarios, the typical request now is more complex: " 'Where are the impacts?' 'How fast is it coming?' and 'What does it mean on a regional scale?' " Buja said. "What does it mean to me in the Rocky Mountains?"

Those who request models include utilities in major Western cities, insurance companies, an international bank and a ski area, Buja and others at NCAR said. All want to plug unique variables into computer models for climate change to anticipate how people can prepare and adapt.

"We didn't have that in the models before," Buja said. "Now, people are asking. It requires us to engage with whole new communities."

An NCAR team last week selected Saunders Construction, based in Denver, to build a $66 million facility on a 24-acre site in Cheyenne, said NCAR spokeswoman Marijke Unger. The 153,000-square-foot facility is expected to house one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, consisting of more than 100,000 processors positioned across a carefully controlled 24,000-square-foot area. It will be 20 times more powerful than the current NCAR computer.

Plans call for a subfloor 10 feet deep, compared with today's 28-inch space, for wiring and cooling the computers. Cheaper and more plentiful electricity from Wyoming's relatively untapped grid, including wind-generated power, is a key factor, said NCAR engineer Gary New, who maintains the current machine.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, one kilowatt-hour of electricity, as averaged across all price structures for residential, commercial and industrial users, costs 8.16 cents in Colorado, compared with 6.03 cents in Wyoming.

Technician Russ Gonsalves, an ex-Air Force code-writing whiz who monitors climate-modeling runs, said, "We will be capable of doing higher-resolution models at a much faster speed."