User Experience of Hurricane Visualization in an Immersive 3D Environment

Numerical models such as the Mesoscale Model 5 (MM5) or the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) are used by meteorologists in the prediction and the study of hurricanes. The outputs from such models vary greatly depending on the model, the initialization conditions, the simulation resolution and the computational resources available. The overwhelming amount of data that is generated can become very difficult to comprehend using traditional 2D visualization techniques. We studied the presentation of such data as well as methods to compare multiple model run outputs using 3D visualization techniques in an immersive virtual environment. We also relate the experiences and opinions of two meteorologists using our system. The datasets used in our study are outputs from two separate MM5 simulation runs of Hurricane Lili (2002) and a WRF simulation run of Hurricane Isabel (2003).