Volumetric Visualization Of NEXRAD Level II Doppler Weather Data From Multiple Sites

Ru, Yi. M.S., Purdue University, December, 2007. Volumetric Visualization of NEXRAD Level II Doppler Weather Data from Multiple Sites. Major Professor: Gary R. Bertoline. Weather visualization is critical for operational forecasters and weather researchers to analyze, monitor, and predict severe weather events such as storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Usually measured weather datasets such as NEXRAD Level II radar data contain some errors and have temporal aliasing issues, so that the raw data cannot represent the true meteorological patterns. Existing weather visualization packages usually ignore these problems, thus they fail to unveil some detailed information and cannot meet the needs of professional meteorologists. Most displays generated by those packages are limited to 2D images, 3D point clouds, or iso-surfaces. Those displays are not able to accurately represent the details of the data. The limitation of visualizing data from a single radar site at one single time step in most packages blocks desirable information in the datasets. We developed an efficient and accurate visualization tool capable of displaying the long-track 3D NEXRAD Level II volumetric weather data from multiple sites. The data were captured and integrated from three sites (KEAX, KILX and KSLX), and rendered by using the hardware-accelerated volume-rendering technique. Customized transfer functions are also provided for users to map data values to optical properties such as color and opacity to create different views. We also implemented a compression algorithm to compress 3D textures in order to