Multimedia Gallery
Tornado Simulation
Tornado simulation of a 1977 supercell thunderstorm and the high-intensity tornado it spawned. The simulation captured the tornado's vortex structure with wind speeds of 260 miles-per-hour, classified as an F5 on the Fujita tornado intensity scale.
More about this Image
Ming Xue of the University of Oklahoma used the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's terascale computer system to run one of the largest tornado simulations ever created. Together with PSC's Greg Foss, who used Xue's numeric simulations to create a 3D visualization, Xue successfully simulated the 1977 supercell thunderstorm and tornado.
Xue is a team member with the NSF Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. The research was supported by National Science Foundation grants ATM 0129892 and EEC 0313747. (Date of Image: May 2004)
Credit: Numerical simulation performed by Dr. Ming Xue, Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms and School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma; 3D visualization created by Greg Foss, Pittsburg Supercomputing Center, with assistance from Ming Xu
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