Distributed visualization of gridded geophysical data: A web API for carbon flux

Abstract

Due to the proliferation of geophysical models, particularly climate models, the increasing resolution of their spatiotemporal estimates of Earth system processes, and the desire to easily share results with collaborators, there is a genuine need for tools to manage, aggregate, visualize, and share datasets. We present a new, web-based software tool – the Carbon Data Explorer – that provides these capabilities for gridded geophysical datasets. While originally developed for visualizing carbon flux, this tool can accommodate any time-varying, spatially explicit scientific dataset, particularly NASA Earth system science Level III products. In addition, the tool's open-source licensing and web presence facilitate distributed scientific visualization, comparison with other datasets and uncertainty estimates, and data publishing and distribution.