Visualization of Clouds and Atmospheric Air Flows

Abstract

Cloud dynamics play an essential role in meteorology. With the increase of computational power and due to the recent advances in cloud modeling, numerical simulations become available that include cloud evolution and precipitation processes at an unprecedented level of detail. This paper summarizes our analysis of the atmospheric cloud, rain and wind data that was provided for the IEEE Scientific Visualization Contest 2017. We provide overview visualizations of the individual attributes and analyze certain subregions in more detail. Among others, we observe vorticity and divergence near the tropopause, render unbiased images of hyperbolic Lagrangian coherent structures, study the influence of topography, visualize takeoff and landing directions of airplanes, compare different data resolutions and present a 3D cloud classification algorithm.