more comprehensive understanding of the interactions between physical, chemical, and ecological drivers and feedbacks on the earth system. Ocean and Cryosphere Current head: Dr. Rong Zhang This divisions goal is to conduct leading research to understand ocean and cryosphere changes and variability; their interactions with weather, climate, sea level, and ecosystems; and advance prediction and projection of future changes. To support this goal, we are developing state-of-the-science numerical models for the ocean, sea ice, land ice, and fully coupled models. Seasonal-to-Decadal Variability and Predictability Current head: Dr. Thomas L. Delworth This divisions goal is to improve our understanding of climate variability, predictability and change on time scales ranging from seasonal to multidecadal. This includes internal variability of the coupled climate system, and the response to changing radiative forcing. We are actively working to develop a next-generation experimental seasonal-to-decadal prediction system. Weather and Climate Dynamics Current head: Thomas Knutson This divisions goal is to develop innovative physical and dynamical components for the next generation of earth system models, with special emphasis on high resolution (1–25 km) atmospheric model development. We aim to explore the frontiers of weather and climate modeling and analysis, and to improve the predictions of high-impact events such as hurricanes, floods, severe storms, and droughts, from weather to seasonal and interannual (2 year) time-scales. Facilities The GFDL is located at Princeton University's Forrestal Campus in Princeton, NJ. Since March 2011, the GFDL no longer possesses an on-site supercomputer. They instead utilize a massively parallel Cray supercomputer with over 140,000 processor cores which is currently located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This contrasts from their previous systems architecture, which consisted of eight Silicon Graphics Altix computers, each housing 1024 processor cores. Hardware updates occur on average, every 18 months. The GFDL has been using high-performance computing systems to perform numerical modeling since the 1950s. Alumni Joseph Smagorinsky: GFDL's first director Jerry D. Mahlman: GFDL's second director Ants Leetmaa: GFDL's third director Dr. Isaac Held Kirk Bryan (oceanographer) Syukoro Manabe Yoshio Kurihara See also Modular Ocean Model GFDL CM2.X References External links National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory NOAA GFDL ranking among the Top 500 Supercomputer Sites http://www.ncrc.gov/ Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Oceanographic organizations Supercomputer sites Organizations based in Princeton, New Jersey