Science exhibits at NCAR's Mesa Laboratory illustrate the atmospheric research being done at NCAR and the processes behind weather and climate. The exhibits display information on climate change, climate conditions in prehistoric times, and the layers and features of the atmosphere.

Photos: Lynda Lester, NCAR/SCD

SCD supports NCAR's research agenda

The exhibits on the mezzanine of NCAR's Mesa Laboratory show some of the science done at NCAR that is supported by SCD's supercomputing facilities, data archives, high-performance networks, and collaborative software environments.

As an integral part of NCAR, SCD helps advance NCAR's mission by supporting research in the atmospheric and related sciences. SCD has a 44-year legacy of helping extend NCAR's scope of research, increasing computing capability for NCAR, and providing the computational tools necessary to understand Earth's complex climate system.

SCD provides assistance to researchers on a variety of modeling and data analysis activities. SCD's Climate Simulation Laboratory, for example, is dedicated to long-running simulations of the Earth's climate, while SCD's community computing facility serves numerous scientific institutions and universities. NCAR's Advanced Research Computing System (ARCS), a system of high-performance computers managed by SCD, is used by the international geosciences community to run models such as the Weather Research and Forecasting Model, the Community Climate System Model, the Penn State/NCAR Mesoscale Model 5, the Model for OZone And Related chemical Tracers (MOZART), and the Parallel Climate Model.

SCD also manages a state-of-the art Visualization Lab and maintains archives of observational and model data critical to atmospheric and oceanographic research.