Collaborative Research: CDI-Type II: 4 Dimensional Visualization of Past Ocean Circulation from Paleoceanographic Data

研究地球历史上过去的气候变化的基本挑战之一是如何重建过去的海洋环流并将其与现代海洋环流(根据现代海洋学观测和计算机模拟得出的)进行比较，以深入了解从15万年前到现在的上一个冰川周期中支配海洋环流的差异和过程。同样，计算机科学中的一个主要挑战是如何从稀疏数据集中提取信息，以及如何有效地将计算思维与自动数据分析相结合，以提取有关特征和过程的新知识。我们的多学科和多机构项目汇集了一支由计算机科学家、物理海洋学家、古海洋学家和计算地球物理学家组成的团队来应对这些挑战。我们正在开发一套创新的计算工具，通过允许研究人员在与地质相关的时间域(第四维)的三维环境中与数据交互，来探索全球海洋环流过去的变化。该项目将把对洋流的分析与以前从深海沉积岩心收集的40年来的地球化学数据结合起来，以获得对过去海洋环流变化的新见解。我们的研究将利用UC Davis KeckCAVES(W.M.Keck地球科学活动可视化中心)提供的独特分析资源和跨学科协作环境。KeckCAVES提供身临其境的交互式可视化技术，帮助科学家在复杂数据集中识别有意义的模式。在这一独特的协作环境中，我们正在开发改进数据内插、提取海洋流动模式、表征随时间变化的海洋流动的方法，以及可视化和与这些依赖时间的大型数据集交互的交互手段。本项目开发的计算方法可广泛应用于流场分析的可视化和数据分析应用。我们开发的科学可视化方法将用于为本科生和研究生教育开发创新的、具有挑战性的和直观的教学材料；使其他研究人员熟悉新的科学方法(视觉辅助分析)；将科学和科学成果带给公众；以及将交互式科学可视化技术带给这一合作项目中的所有合作机构。

One of the fundamental challenges in the study of past climate change in Earth history is how to reconstruct and compare past ocean circulation (as derived from sparse geochemical data collected from fossils in deep-sea sedimentary cores) with modern ocean circulation (as constructed from modern oceanographic observations and computer simulations) to yield insight into the differences and processes governing ocean circulation throughout the last glacial cycle from 150,000 years ago to the present. Similarly, a major challenge in computer science is how to extract information from sparse datasets, and how to effectively combine computational thinking with automated data analysis, to extract new knowledge about features and processes. Our multidisciplinary and multi-institutional project brings together a team of computer scientists, physical oceanographers, paleoceanographers, and computational geophysicists to address these challenges. We are developing an innovative suite of computational tools to explore past changes in global ocean circulation by allowing researchers to interact with data in a 3-dimensional environment across a geologically relevant time domain (the 4th dimension). This project will merge analysis of ocean flow with 40 years of previously-collected geochemical data from deep-sea sedimentary cores in order to gain new insights into past ocean circulation change. Our research will take advantage of the unique analytical resources and interdisciplinary collaborative environment provided by the UC Davis KeckCAVES (W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences). The KeckCAVES provides immersive interactive visualization technologies that help scientists identify meaningful patterns in complex datasets. In this unique collaborative environment, we are developing methods to improve data interpolation, to extract ocean flow patterns, and to characterize ocean flow over time for potential change detection, along with interactive means of visualizing and interacting with those large and time-dependent datasets. The computational methods developed in this project are adaptable to a wide range of visualization and data-analysis applications for analysis of flow fields. The scientific visualization methods we develop will be used to develop innovative, provocative, and intuitive instructional materials for undergraduate and graduate education; for making other researchers familiar with new scientific methodology (visually-aided analysis); for bringing science and scientific results to the public; and for bringing interactive scientific visualization technology to all of the partner institutions in this collaborative project.