Analyzing and Visualizing Next Generation Climate Data

The continuous effort to improve global warming predictions has led numerous computer climate models to abandon longitude-latitude grids in favor of assemblies of structured meshes. However, these novel ¿Mosaic¿ grids exhibit complex folding patterns, which are posing severe problems to post-processing and visualization applications. This project will develop a Mosaic Data Analysis and Visualization Extension (MoDAVE) software package that will allow post­-processing applications to correctly interpret data on large Mosaic grids. In Phase I, visualizations of atmospheric data were produced on the Mosaic cubed-sphere grid, and strategies were devised to accelerate post-processing and visualization tasks, using parallel computations on multi-cores and Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). In Phase II, software will be developed that will lead to a product capable of performing interpolation, ghosting, visualization, and spatial averaging tasks on Mosaics using parallel/GPU processing. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: MoDAVE should provide parallel/accelerated Mosaic data-processing back-end support for programs of the Earth System Grid and other climate forecasting applications. In addition, MoDAVE should benefit other DOE sponsored research, including fusion, where the magnetic axis plays a similar role to the north and south poles.