Visualizing wind velocities by advecting cloud textures
In order to visualize both clouds and wind in climate simulations, we have rendered clouds using a 3-D texture which is advected by the wind flow. Clouds have a significant influence on global temperatures, because they reflect the short wave radiation from the sun, and also absorb and reflect the longer wave radiation re-emitted by the earth. It is not certain which of these effects is larger, so the influence of clouds is an open research problem. Clouds are the least understood aspect of climate models; it is not even known whether global warming will cause an increase in cloudiness. Cloud response to climate perturbations has the capability to magnify the climate change or to reduce its severity. Visualization is an important tool for analyzing and understanding climate simulation output, and we have developed algorithms for visualizing scalar climate data, including cloud density. It is also important to visualize wind velocity, which is a vector field. When a time sequence of cloud data is viewed in animation, motion of the cloud density gives information about the prevailing winds. We have added texture to the clouds, and advected the texture with the wind. We used a 3-D volume texture, evaluated at a contour surface of cloud density, and advected the three texture coordinates. In addition to helping visualize the wind, the resulting realistic cloud textures will portray climate modeling research results easily to the general public.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 7115058
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-110242; CONF-921079-2; ON: DE92014717
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Visualization 1992, Boston, MA (United States), 19-23 Oct 1992
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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