High Performance Computing for 4D Weather Cubes and Real-Time, World-Wide Visualization of Radiative Effects

The requirement of high performance computers is inherent in the overarching goal of immediate, world-wide forecasts of atmospheric effects and radiative transfer whether to assist with traditional aviation weather services or to manage best employment of emerging national and civil remote sensing capabilities. The Laser Environmental Effects Definition and Reference (LEEDR) is a verified and validated atmospheric propagation and radiative transfer code which creates physically realizable vertical and horizontal profiles of meteorological data and environmental effects using climatological and Global Forecast System numerical weather data. Using these inputs, the code proceeds to produce nowcast and forecast, as well as post-event, atmospheric radiative effects including particle-induced extinction, turbulence profiles, and path refraction (light bending). By itself, LEEDR and its graphical user interface (GUI) has the capability to provide a “2D” picture of localized atmospheric radiative properties and processes. In an effort to migrate to a world-wide 4D visualization capability, LEEDR was optimized and parallelized for migration onto the Department of Defense HPC network. Wrapper classes and the Parallel Computing Toolbox within MATLAB (LEEDR's source code language) aided in the optimization of LEEDR. The wrapper classes were written as a means to circumvent LEEDR's GUI and easily execute batch runs for efficient, speedy parametric analyses. With the use of these classes, computationally intensive analyses supporting anywhere, anytime atmospheric effects visualization are able to be demonstrated. The results of the analyses are displayed in the form of a 4D weather cube specific to a universal time reference, locations of interest (i.e. geo-referenced light source and remote sensor) and a user-provided output parameter such as transmission. Each weather cube depicts the variability of output parameter with respect to the source-endpoint geo-referenced location and, most importantly, relative to the ambient atmosphere. In addition to transmission, 4D refractivity and path-averaged index of refraction structure constant, Cn2, weather cubes are introduced.