Resources for Data Analysis and Visualization

4DVD (4-dimensional visual delivery of big climate data www.4dvd.org): This user-friendly visual and distributed-computing system, developed at San Diego State University, displays and delivers various kinds of climate data to classrooms, households, museums, and school kids, grandparents, business people bas well as scientists. The four dimensions in the 4DVD system means that it can display and deliver data of lat-lon (2 dimensions), height or depth level (1 dimension), and time (1 dimension). A user can download the data of a map shown in a 4DVD computer screen, see the historical time series of the data record at any point of the globe, and download its data. The name of 4DVD comes not only from the first letters of 4-dimensional visual delivery, but also from the DVD player, which was popularly used in the 1980s and 1990s for playing music and movies. The DVD machine was used to play discs, and 4DVD is used to “play” data, where “play” means display and delivery.


Panoply (www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply ): This is a user-friendly and powerful software to view the data in the format of netCDF, HDF, and GRIB. It was developed by NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Panoply can beautifully plot the global data in various kinds of map projections.