Speaker: Böttinger, Michael (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum)
Abstract
Since the term "scientific visualization" was coined in the late 1980s, weather forecasting and climate modelling have been among the most prominent areas of application for this relatively young discipline. Besides statistical analysis, visualization is probably the most important tool for evaluating the complex and extensive climate simulation data. In my talk, I will briefly discuss the difference between weather and climate and explain the implications for the visualization of climate and climate change as opposed to the visualization of weather phenomena. However, since climate change will also affect actual future weather events (i.e. their probability, frequency and intensity), we need to deal with both weather and climate when analyzing and visualizing the results of climate projections, i.e. data and phenomena at different spatial and temporal scales. Using many practical examples, I will give an - admittedly subjective - overview of the current state of climate data visualization, i.e. the techniques and tools used in practice. In addition, I will also discuss the challenges we face in light of current trends in high-performance computing and climate modeling, and the resulting requirements.
Short Bio
Michael Böttinger received his Diploma in Geophysics from the University of Hamburg, Germany, in 1988, after which he started working in the field of climate modeling at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. In 1990 he joined the scientific visualization team at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ). Today, he leads DKRZ’s visualization and public relations group. His research is application oriented and focuses on scientific visualization of climate model data for scientific discovery as well as for communication to the broad public.
