Jian Zhou presents at GEOIDE

Masters student Jian Zhou presented his work on integrating Ferret with the Google Earth API at the Annual GEOIDE meeting.

Design and Implementation of a Script to Integrate Ferret with KML

Jian Zhou and Renee Sieber

Climate change is considered an urgent concern for society yet a very complex and difficult process to understand scientifically. Computer-driven climate models are simplifications of the real world and the primary tools used today in climate change research. Many excellent visualization and data analysis tools have been developed for the study and evaluation of large climate model outputs that are mainly in NetCDF format.

Recent years have seen scientists publicize climate data on earth browsers (e.g., Google Earth, NASA World Wind) for the users to visualize and analysis in three dimensional spaces. The data is being transferred into the earth browsers via KML. KML, an international standard maintained by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC year). Because climate data is georegistered to a common base, KML files allow users to overlay and expose this data in new ways.

The question is: how can one use earth browsers to display climate data? My method involves modification of a software program called Ferret and an application of the Google Earth API. I build a script for Ferret, which is the most common data visualization tool used by climate scientists to map their climate data output onto a 2D globe. With the script, Ferret is capable of generating KML/KMZ files directly. These KML/KMZ files are then input into a Google Earths mashup. The mashup is designed to show multiple side by side views of the climate data. It allows the user to select up to nine earths to view. Each earth can display a unique dataset or the same data set. The earths can be controlled separately (zooming, panning) or they can be synchronized.

This project improves Ferret and provides a new tool via the Google Earth mashup. The script enhances Ferret’s capabilities to visualize and analysis of climate data. It is expected to be publicized in the next version of Ferret. By taking advantage of earth browsers and KML/KMZ, the hope is that climate scientists can dynamically visualize and analyse climate data in three dimensional spaces.