NCAR director of technology development on climate modeling: "it's just math...We feed in the basic laws of science, and out comes something that looks like the Earth's climate"

New Wyoming supercomputer expected to boost atmospheric science - latimes.com

The National Center for Atmospheric Research's supercomputer has been dubbed Yellowstone, after the nearby national park, but it could have been named Nerdvana. The machine will have 100 racks of servers and 72,000 core processors, so many parts that they must be delivered in the back of a 747...

"These are chaotic systems, but it's just math," said Richard Loft, director of technology development at NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory. "We play statistics in the climate game. We feed in the basic laws of science, and out comes something that looks like the Earth's climate. It's an instrument. This is a mathematical telescope."

...The computer will be housed in a futuristic, $70-million compound west of Cheyenne. The National Science Foundation, which funds NCAR, is paying $50 million of the tab.