Information Visualization in Climate Research

Much of the work conducted in climate research involves large and heterogeneous datasets with spatial and temporal references. This makes climate research an interesting application area for visualization. However, the application of interactive visual methods to assist in gaining insight into climate data is still hampered for climate research scientists, who are usually not visualization experts. In this paper, we report on a survey that we conducted to evaluate the application of interactive visualization methods and to identify the problems related to establishing such methods in scientific practice. The feedback from 76 participants shows clearly that state-of-the-art techniques are rarely applied and that integrating existing solutions smoothly into the scientists workflow is problematic. We have begun to change this and present first results that illustrate how interactive visualization tools can be successfully applied to accomplish climate research tasks. As a concrete example, we describe the visualization of climate networks and its benefits for climate impact research.