Visualizing wind velocities by advecting cloud textures

Conference · Wed Apr 01 04:00:00 EST 1992

OSTI ID:7115058

Max, N; Crawfis, R; Williams, D

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: DOE; 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
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540110*
58 GEOSCIENCES
580000 -- Geosciences
ADVECTION
CLIMATE MODELS
CLIMATIC CHANGE
CLOUDS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
FLOW VISUALIZATION
GREENHOUSE EFFECT
MASS TRANSFER
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
SIMULATION
VECTOR FIELDS
VELOCITY
WIND