A New Three-Dimensional Visualization System for Combining Aircraft and Radar Data and Its Application to RICO Observations

Abstract The analysis of diverse datasets from meteorological field campaigns often involves the use of separate 1D or combined 2D plots from various applications, making the determination of spatial and temporal relationships and correlations among these data, and the overall synthesis of information, extremely challenging. Presented here is a new 3D visualization tool, the Aircraft and Radar Data Collocation and Analysis in 3D (ARCA3D), that can combine data collected from different sources and at different scales, utilizing advanced visualization and user interface techniques, which allows for easier comparison and synthesis of such disparate data. The 3D tool is demonstrated with aircraft-based microphysical probe data and ground-based dual-polarization radar data all collected during the Rain in Cumulus over the Ocean (RICO) field campaign. The 3D volumes of radar data can be interactively selected and quantitatively probed, while aircraft-measured variables can be viewed along the aircraft track plo...

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