| Digital Radiance developed the Web-based visualization application
for the 3D hurricane windflow datasets gathered during the Global Hydrology and Climate Center's
(GHCC) 1998 Convection and Moisture EXperiement
(CAMEX-3.) The CAMEX-3 mission studied the life cycle of four Atlantic hurricanes via
instruments flown onboard NASA ER-2 and DC-8 aircraft. These aircraft flew around as well
as within the eye of these massive storms, collecting hurricane data over land and sea.
The CAMEX-3 MACAWS
LIDAR instrument, an airborne coherent Doppler laser radar, gathered unprecedented 3D hurricane
windflow information.
The visualization application, combining Web-based Java technology with Digital Radiance's extensive
scientific visualization expertise, allows researchers worldwide to display and
retrieve the exact 3D MACAWS datasets for their scientific processing needs.
Try out the tool here.
Note that the datasets are fairly large (4 MB+) and that there were several
runs where the MACAWS instrument did not achieve adequate line-of-sight.
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| The upper part of the image above shows the
flight path and position of the MACAWS aircraft through hurricane
Bonnie at 1702 UTC on August 26, 1998. The aircraft path is
represented as a yellow line, the position as a red dot, the
eastern US coastline is depicted with purple lines, and the GOES
satellite image of the hurricane is in shades of gray. The
lower part of the image above shows the 3D LIDAR wind-field
dataset as recorded at the aircraft's position. The
viewpoint is looking downward over the aircraft's left-side and
the wind-field is represented as vectors in various shades of red,
green and yellow. |
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