PROJECT DESCRIPTION
We work in close collaboration with climate modelers at Los Alamos National Laboratory on a number of projects. One such ongoing project studies the biogeochemistry of the Gulf of Mexico in order to determine where algal blooms have occurred in the past and may occur in the future as the climate rapidly shifts.
Marine macroalgae in the Gulf of Mexico is an important potential source for biofuel. However, identifying locations with the correct biogeochemical and hydrodynamic conditions for cultivation on a large enough scale to meet the needs of the U.S. private energy sector is impossible from purely observational studies. Large-scale, HPC modeling of earth systems processes enables researchers to study complex physical relationships with high fidelity. Here, we present novel visualization techniques showing the results of a global run of the E3SM’s MPAS-Ocean model data with biogeochemistry extensions to improve ongoing research in macroalgae cultivation.
We use our Artifact-Based Rendering (ABR) tool to visualize this simulation data in three dimensions with unique glyphs, streamlines, colormaps and textures, allowing scientists to better recognize and study relationships between these many interdependent variables in space.
Above, the image on the left is the typical method used to visualize this type of data. The images on the right contain the same information as well as the three-dimensional distribution of the nitrates, chlorophyll, and other variables co-located in space.
We would like to thank Mathew Maltrud, Mark Petersen, and Zhendong Cao for assisting with core science questions. This research was partially funded by the National Science Foundation under awards IIS 1704604 and IIS 1704904 and by ARPA-E Funding Opportunity No. DE-FOA-0001726, MARINER Award 17/CJ000/09/01, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, prime recipient and the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program of Los Alamos National Laboratory under project number 20200065DR.