CLIMATESIM


A project in climate data visualization



INTRODUCTION

Climatedata can be huge and hard do understand without the proper visualization tools. This project is made for the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), with the goal to develop a new interactive tool for visualization of climate data.

The tool is implemented as a web application that runs in a browser. To use the application, visit the link below.

METHODS

The project was done using the SCRUM model. We have had continous meetings with the customer, taking feedback and done implementations according to the customers requests.

The project made as a server-client application and is written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript for the client code and Python for the server code. The main software frameworks used in the project are WebGL as the graphics API in the browser, Flask as the web server framework, NetCDF for handling climate data and Sphinx for documentation.

RESULTS

The result is a web-application that can properly visualize climate data for four different parameters at near real-time. The parameters are precipitation, heavy downfall, daily maximum near-surface air temperatures and extra warm days.

Precipitation and daily maximum near-surface air temperatures are data from CORDEX climate database while extra warm days and heavy downfall are parameters derived from precipitation and daily maximum near-surface air temperatures.

When the user chooses a parameter, the data will be painted on the map. An example for the parameter Daily Maximum Near Surface Air Temperature can be seen below.

Statistics are derived for each parameter and when selecting a country on the map, the statistics for that country can be shown on demand (see below). For Sweden it is also possible to see statistics for every county or municipality.

EXTERNAL LINKS

To use the application, click the button below and it will take you to the web site.

To check out the user manual, click the left button below. To read the technical documentation, click the right button.