NOAA View: A Visualization Tool for Archived and Real-Time Data

Wouldn't data discovery be easier if you could see the output before actually downloading it? Although data visualization provides an invaluable ability to better understand the complex processes associated with studying atmospheric and oceanic data, an enormous amount of time may be spent in the initial research phases of downloading and developing preliminary data plots. The NOAA Visualization Lab has recently released a new data portal that may help expedite the process of seeing visualizing data and comparing variables. The NOAA View portal is not a typical data portal - it is a data imagery portal. Using pre-rendered imagery of NOAA's vast data archives, the WMS-enabled website interface allows the user to easily browse historical and real-time data for over 75 variables. Though initially intended as an outreach tool, the site has proven useful to researchers, and also acts as a portal to official data distribution points in NOAA. In this presentation we will discuss the architecture and browsing capabilities of NOAA View related to its application in data discovery and exploration.