Visualizing high-resolution climate data

Abstract

The complexity of the physics of the atmosphere makes it hard to evaluate the temporal evolution of weather patterns. We are also limited by the available computing power, disk, and memory space. As the technology in hardware and software advances, new tools are being developed to simulate weather conditions to make predictions more accurate. We also need to be able to visualize the data we obtain from climate model runs, to better understand the relationship between the variables driving the evolution of weather systems. Two tools that have been developed to visualize climate data are Vis5D and Cave5D. This paper discusses the process of taking data in the MM5 format, converting it to a format recognized by Vis5D and Cave5D, and then visualizing the data. It also discusses some of the changes we have made in these programs, including making Cave5D more interactive and rewriting Cave5D and Vis5D to use larger data files. Finally, we discuss future research concerning the use of these programs.