Supercomputers help researchers improve severe hail storms forecasts

aarondubrow writes: Researchers working on the Severe Hail Analysis, Representation and Prediction (SHARP) project at University of Oklahoma used the Stampede supercomputer to gain a better understanding of the conditions that cause severe hail to form, and to produce hail forecasts with far greater accuracy than those currently used operationally. The model the team used is six times more resolved that the National Weather Service's highest-resolution official forecasts and applies machine learning algorithms to improve its predictions. The researchers will publish their results in an upcoming issue of the American Meteorological Society journal Weather and Forecasting.