The Working Group was chaired by Dr. Richard Rood of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and included a representative from each of the Federal agencies with a significant investment in global weather and climate modelling. It also articulates the shortcomings of US policy on HPC in a frank and incisive way. I have taken the liberty to use extracts from this report to wet your appetite, but I strongly recommend that anyone interested in Climate and HPC should read the actual report. The Program has supported research that has led to substantial increases in knowledge, improved predictive understanding, and documented evidence of global environmental change, including major scientific advances in the understanding of stratospheric ozone depletion, the El Nino-Southern Oscillation phenomenon, global climate change, tropical deforestation, and other issues. In short they want a climate institute to be set up with at least 150 scientists at an estimated cost of 70-120 million dollars a year for the next five years.
Parallel computers manufactured in the U.S., often with distributed memory, are difficult to use.
The U.S. climate-science community is faced with a difficult, perhaps intractable, problem. With the present national strategic focus on distributed-memory computers, a tremendous expenditure on software is required. This includes not only applications software, but also the systems software needed to make the computer systems run. One can't help but recall that when the Egyptians built the Aswan Dam, the rest of the world had to dismantle ancient temples and reconstruct them on higher ground. One wonders whether in 50 years time the White House and Abe Lincoln would get the same treatment, thanks to current political actions.