Exploratory Climate Data Visualization and Analysis Using DV3D and UVCDAT

Abstract

Earth system scientists are being inundated by an explosion of data generated by ever-increasing resolution in both global models and remote sensors. Advanced tools for accessing, analyzing, and visualizing very large and complex climate data are required to maintain rapid progress in Earth system research. To meet this need, NASA, in collaboration with the Ultra-scale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UVCDAT) consortium, is developing exploratory climate data analysis and visualization tools which provide data analysis capabilities for the Earth System Grid (ESG). This paper describes DV3D, a UV-CDAT package that enables exploratory analysis of climate simulation and observation datasets. DV3D provides user-friendly interfaces for visualization and analysis of climate data at a level appropriate for scientists. It features workflow interfaces, interactive 4D data exploration, hyperwall and stereo visualization, automated provenance generation, and parallel task execution. DV3D's integration with CDAT's climate data management system (CDMS) and other climate data analysis tools provides a wide range of high performance climate data analysis operations. DV3D expands the scientists' toolbox by incorporating a suite of rich new exploratory visualization and analysis methods for addressing the complexity of climate datasets.