Forecasting ozone action days easier because of new NASA supercomputer

AUSTIN (KXAN) - A new NASA supercomputer is making it easier to track ozone on Earth. NASA recently unveiled a new system that will be able to better predict ozone in our atmosphere, holes in the Antarctica ozone layer and ozone action days.

"Ozone is a molecule that absorbs harmful solar ultraviolet radiation, we kind of break up ozone into the good ozone, that screening ultraviolet radiation, and then there's the bad ozone down at the surface, which is pollution," said Paul A. Newman, chief scientist for earth science with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Newman said the reason NASA tracks ozone is it helps them predict pollution levels on Earth. The new supercomputer will be used to not only track current ozone levels but forecast future levels.

"We can also use it as a climate model. That is, we can put in long-term changes and look at timescales of 10 to 100 to a few 100 years."

You can learn more about the new supercomputer in the interview above.