Visualization of Four Dimensional Data on Virtual
Globes
Ross Swick, John Maurer,
Vince Troisi, I-Pin Wang
National Snow and Ice Data Center, CIRES, University of
Colorado, Boulder, 449 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309, United States
The recent proliferation of virtual
globes seems to have captured the public imagination to a degree seldom seen
in the Earth Sciences. Virtual globes, such as Google Earth and World Winds,
do such a fantastic job of rendering geolocated imagery on a 3D Earth it
would be almost criminal not to take advantage. For just the cost of
creating compatible imagery the scientific community can offer data
visualization capabilities with features like zoom, variable transparency,
overlays, etc...
But for the climate change community 3D is not enough. To show change over
time one needs 4D capabilities. Using 20-30 year time series data from the
National Snow and Ice Data Center this presentation explores methods for
incorporating four dimensional data into virtual globes.