Visualization of stratospheric ozone depletion and the polar vortex

Direct analysis of spacecraft observations of stratospheric ozone yields information about the morphology of annual austral depletion. Visual correlation of ozone with other atmospheric data illustrates the diurnal dynamics of the polar vortex and contributions from the upper troposphere, including the formation and breakup of the depletion region each spring. These data require care in their presentation to minimize the introduction of visualization artifacts that are erroneously interpreted as data features. Non-geographically registered data of differing mesh structures can be visually correlated via cartographic warping of underlying geometries without interpolation. Since this approach is independent of realization technique, it provides a framework for experimenting with different visualization strategies. This methodology preserves the fidelity of the original data sets in a coordinate system suitable for three-dimensional, dynamic examination of upper atmospheric phenomena