HR: 11:12h
AN: SF12A-05    [Abstracts]
TI: Multiresolution Precipitation Visualization of Weather Radar Volume Scans
AU: Gerstner, T
EM: gerstner@ins.uni-bonn.de
AF: University of Bonn, Department for Applied Mathematics Wegelerstr. 6, Bonn, 53115 Germany
AU: * Meetschen, D
EM: dmeetsch@uni-bonn.de
AF: University of Bonn, Department of Meteorology Auf dem H\"ugel 20, Bonn, 53121 Germany
AU: Simmer, C
EM: csimmer@uni-bonn.de
AF: University of Bonn, Department of Meteorology Auf dem H\"ugel 20, Bonn, 53121 Germany
AB: Weather radars measure the backscatter from atmospheric hydrometeors. The three-dimensional structure of a complete radar scan contains information which can improve rainfall rate estimates which is crucial for hydrological modeling and simulations. For the understanding and conveyance of the data, interactive volume visualization tools within visual geographic information systems are required. However, due to the large size of the data it is difficult to achieve real-time visualization performance. Furthermore, the data has to be put in a context for better comprehension, e.g. by additionally rendering the local terrain or satellite image data which further increases the amount of data which has to be displayed. In addition, the simultaneous display of volume and surface data leads to algorithmic visualization difficulties. In this talk, we address these problems by adaptive multiresolution algorithms (see [1]). Multiresolution methods allow a fast coarse display of the data for overview images or interaction, while higher resolution is used when zooming into the data or for detail images. The algorithms are adaptive in the sense that the resolution does not have to be uniform everywhere but may be variable in space. For example, in smooth areas a lower resolution can be sufficient to provide a good representation of the data while in areas with greater variation a higher resolution is used. The adaptive refinement is controlled by suitable error indicators which can be specified by the user. The employed volume visualization algorithm is based on the simultaneous extraction of several transparent isosurfaces. In this way, interactive visualization performance of time-varying three-dimensional radar data can be achieved without the usage of special-purpose hardware (apart from a standard graphics card). [1] T. Gerstner, D. Meetschen, S. Crewell, M. Griebel, and C. Simmer. A Case Study on Multiresolution Visualization of Local Rainfall from Weather Radar Measurements. In H. Pfister and M. Bailey, editors, Proceedings IEEE Visualization 2002, pages 533-536. IEEE Computer Society Press, 2002.
DE: 6952 Radar atmospheric physics
DE: 6969 Remote sensing
SC: Special Focus: Advances in Data Acquisition, Management, Analysis and Display [SF]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting