Exploring Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean Models Using Vis5D

Abstract

A distributed client/server system can be used to visualize very large simulation data sets. An example of a very large simulation data set is a 100-year simulation of the Earth's coupled atmosphere-ocean system. This model run was produced by an Argonne National Laboratory/University of Wisconsin collaborative project that is studying atmosphere-ocean coupling dynamics to understand the intrinsic low-frequency variability of the climate system. This understanding is crucial for the prediction and detec tion of human impacts on the Earth's climate. To visually explore this simulation, an IBM SP-2 is used as a data server and a pair of SGI Onyxes driving a CAVE are used as a graphics client. The SP-2 server divides the data set into sections that will fit in the memory of the graphics client. The data set is divided along the time axis. One data set section covers the entire 100-year span of the simula tion at reduced-time resolution, while the other data set sections cover short subintervals at full-time resolution. The visualization user interface allows users to switch between low and high time resolution.