Statistical Rendering for Visualization of Red Sea Eddy Simulation Data

TL;DR

This paper introduces statistical visualization techniques, including volume rendering and Morse complex maps, to analyze uncertainty and eddy positions in Red Sea simulation data, aiding oceanological research.

Contribution

It applies and demonstrates statistical visualization algorithms to ocean simulation data, highlighting uncertainty propagation and topological variations in eddy analysis.

Findings

Effective visualization of eddy positions and uncertainties.

Quantitative analysis of flow topology variations.

Enhanced understanding of ocean energy transport.

Abstract

Analyzing the effects of ocean eddies is important in oceanology for gaining insights into transport of energy and biogeochemical particles. We present an application of statistical visualization algorithms for the analysis of the Red Sea eddy simulation ensemble. Specifically, we demonstrate the applications of statistical volume rendering and statistical Morse complex summary maps to a velocity magnitude field for studying the eddy positions in the flow dataset. In statistical volume rendering, we model per-voxel data uncertainty using noise models, such as parametric and nonparametric, and study the propagation of uncertainty into the volume rendering pipeline. In the statistical Morse complex summary maps, we derive histograms charactering uncertainty of gradient flow destinations to understand Morse complex topological variations across the ensemble. We demonstrate the utility of our statistical visualizations for an effective analysis of the potential eddy positions and their spatial uncertainty.