The new GFS has certainly narrowed the gap.

全球预报系统升级后着实缩小了与欧洲中期天气预报中心的差距。

The GFS suggested 18cm. That turned out to be far closer to the truth.

但全球预报系统却预报积雪厚度为18厘米，最后事实证明后者预测更为准确。

In contrast, the GFS begins with a snapshot of a single moment.

相较之下，美国的全球预报系统只能对某一特定时刻做云图拍照，进而分析预测。

A new version of the GFS went into operation on January 14th, and two weeks later it passed with flying colours.

1月14日，升级后的全球预报系统投入运行，仅两个星期后它就斩获成功。

Nonetheless, the GFS's strong showing during January's nor'easter offers solace to critics who feared America would never catch up with Europe in matters meteorological.

之前批评家们担心美国在气象预报方面永远也赶不上欧洲，但是全球预报系统在1月份对暴风雪东北锋面的准确预测给予了他们一些安慰。

A week before that storm's landfall in 2012, the ECMWF predicted it would veer towards the coast while the GFS showed it remaining at sea.

三年前，在飓风桑迪登陆的一周前，欧洲中期天气预报中心预测飓风会径直朝沿海运动，但全球预报系统却预测它会停留在海面。

Its Cray XC30 supercomputer can perform up to 2 quadrillion calculations a second, about ten times more than the GFS hardware before the recent upgrade.

该气象中心拥有一台Cray XC30型超级电脑，一秒内就能运算2万亿次，其运算能力是全球预报系统硬件升级前的十倍多。

For more than two decades the Global Forecast System (GFS), the leading weather-prediction model produced in the United States, has been notably less accurate than its chief competitor, published by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

较之二者，全球预报系统所得成功虽微不足道，但美国气象界仍对此大呼叫好。全球预报系统是美国最为先进的天气预报模型，二十多年来，它发布的天气预测准确性显然落后于它的劲敌--欧洲中期天气预报中心。