Faster Computers Accelerate Pace of Discovery - washingtonpost.com

Interesting times

A particularly fruitful area of computer modeling has been the study of global climate change. Ten years ago, experts agreed that humans probably were contributing to global warming. Now, in part because of a 10,000-fold increase computing power and better accuracy in climate simulations, scientists are sure of it.

One result is that computer climate models can now simulate atmospheric and oceanic conditions and, crucially, how changes in each affect the other, experts said. Now the worry is not that computing power is inadequate but that the aging of NASA's weather satellites will lead to a shortage of input data before long, Seager and others said.

Faster Computers Accelerate Pace of Discovery - washingtonpost.com