EViz - Empowering Earth System Model Data Visualization

Earth system model data visualization plays a pivotal role in comprehending complex environmental processes and facilitating informed decision-making. Here, we introduce EViz, a tool designed to simplify the visualization of earth system model data. EViz is a Python-based tool that empowers researchers and scientists to effortlessly navigate the intricacies of data visualization without the need for extensive coding expertise.

Traditionally, data visualization has been a code-intensive endeavor, presenting a barrier for many users. EViz helps to overcome this barrier by providing a dual-mode operational approach, thus catering to distinct visualization preferences. The first mode, called eViz, capitalizes on Matplotlib's code base to generate static maps. eViz avoids the burdens of coding by focusing on the specification of data sources and plot requirements in YAML configuration files. The second mode, called iViz, combines Bokeh and Holoviews within Jupyter notebooks to spawn interactive dashboards that encourage exploration and hypothesis testing. This dual-mode approach offers users the flexibility to create visuals that cater to their visualization objectives.

Many of EViz's features have an indispensable role in the domain of earth system model data visualization. Thus, EViz provides a comprehensive array of 1D and 2D plot types, ranging from profile and time-series plots to lat-lon and zonal mean plots as well as scatter, histogram, and violin plots. The tool also offers expanded 2D plots, such as Hovmoller and total column plots, allowing for deeper insights into spatial and temporal trends as well as satellite data analysis. Furthermore, EViz offers the remarkable capability to conduct comparisons, facilitating both model-to-model and model-to-observation analyses.

One of EViz's standout attributes is its model-agnostic nature, not being tied to institutional and model-specific confines. Supporting a multitude of data sources, the tool's adaptability is underscored by the ease with which new sources can be seamlessly integrated. EViz further extends its capabilities by seamlessly incorporating HDF5 support for select data sources and accommodating GRIB files—widely used in meteorology.

EViz approach to visualization, thus, simplifies the intricate task of earth system model data exploration and, with its seamless, code-free dual-mode approach, equips researchers with an intuitive means to explore and understand earth system processes.