Visualization of Earth Science Data Using Google Earth

With Google Earth being widely used by the general public and professionals, Virtual Globes are revolutionizing the way in which scientists conduct their research and the general public uses geospatial-related data and information. NASA Goddard Earth Science Data and Information Service Center (GES DISC) developed a service-oriented online scientific data analysis system to provide customable online analysis to huge volumes of two-dimensional and three-dimensional atmospheric scientific data. In this paper, Google Earth and Keyhole Markup Language (KML) are used to cooperate with GES DISC online system to enhance the visualization and visualized analysis of Earth science data. In this paper, general solutions to visualizing Earth science data in Google Earth are proposed and illustrated in details and implemented. A new method is proposed for visualizing vertical satellite data in the form of vertical orbit curtain in Google Earth. The visualization of Earth scientific data and their visualized synergy in Google Earths enables easy and straight synergistic research based on a virtual platform, advancing collaborative and globalized scientific research. * Corresponding author: Aijun Chen, [email protected]; Tel: (1)301-614-5152; Fax: (1)301-614-5268