The R&D department of the Information and Observation Technology division at KNMI is traditionally involved in research and development of 2D visualization methods for operational use in the KNMI Weather Office. In the past years we have been utilizing Web and GIS (WebGIS) technologies, applying the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services to provide many scientists with access to various atmospheric datasets.Our most recent research activities focus on studying 3D visualization methods for meteorological data in Virtual Reality (VR) environments.

In the area of WebGIS visualization we would like to point your attention to the Adaguc Web Portal which provides access to various atmospheric datasets. With this portal the datasets can be viewed, queried and downloaded. Multiple layers can be viewed simultaneously allowing for comparison between different datasets. The Adaguc portal is based on the OpenGIS® Web Map, Web Feature and Web Coverage services (WMS, WFS and WCS respectively).

KNMI is performing research and development on Numerical Weather Prediction models, such as HIRLAM and HARMONIE. Various departments of KNMI have been working intensively on a Learning Environment for 3D visualization of NWP models (3DVIS-LE project), where the 3DVIS environment serves as an experimental research platform for the meteorologists, forecasters and the model developers. We have developed an interactive 3D visualization framework Weather3DeXplorer (w3dx) and we are studying the application of 3D visualization for the training of our meteorologists. We are regularly demonstrating the added value of 3D while exploring the meteorological data of severe weather situations. One of the recent presentations was W3DX at EUMETCAL WMO.

Current 3D visualization activities include experimental deployment of W3DX concept in operational settings of the KNMI Weather Office.