Visual data exploration of space-time characteristics of mesoscale eddies in the South China Sea: A cube-based approach

Study of generation characteristics in space and time has been an important topic in the research on mesoscale eddies in the South China Sea (SCS). As conventional statistical methods are limited to analyzing only the spatial characteristics, this study proposes a cube-based approach which is capable of investigating the spatiotemporal characteristics at different granularities in a hybrid space-time framework. To provide a proof-of-concept study of the approach, we developed a density analysis tool, named CubeViz. Using the generation dataset of the eddies, the paper presents how CubeViz facilitates the data visualization and exploration in an interactive and flexible manner. And the analysis results show the proposed approach provides useful insight into discovering the space-time characteristics of mesoscale eddies in the SCS.