Visual exploration and evaluation of climate-related simulation data

Large, heterogeneous volumes of simulation data are calculated and stored in many disciplines, e.g. in climate and climate impact research. To gain insight, current climate analysis applies statistical methods and model sensitivity analyzes in combination with standard visualization techniques. However, there are some obstacles for researchers in applying the full functionality of sophisticated visualization, exploiting the available interaction and visualization functionality in order to go beyond data presentation tasks. In particular, there is a gap between available and actually applied multi-variate visualization techniques. Furthermore, visual data comparison of simulation (and measured) data is still a challenging task. Consequently, this paper introduces a library of visualization techniques, tailored to support exploration and evaluation of climate simulation data. These techniques are integrated into the easy-to-use visualization framework SimEnvVis - designed as a front-end user interface to a simulation environment - which provides a high level of user support generating visual representations.