Design Of Meteorological Data Visualization System Based On Google Earth

Weather condition affects people’s daily life. However, traditional meteorological data is simply in the form of sheets and texts, which is abstract and difficult for the public to understand and lacks intuitive performance. Therefore, the intuitive and visual expression of meteorological data is necessary. With the development of computer graphics technology, simulation of weather phenomena is more and more common, but weather phenomena simulated can’t update dynamically according to the real-time weather information and also ignore the characteristic that meteorological elements are geographical information. In order to solve the above problems, this paper designs a visualization system of meteorological data based on Google Earth in Visual Studio2008+C#.NET.Firstly, real-time information is got by calling web service of weather forecast. Then, according to the respective characteristic of rain, snow, clouds, fog and other common weather phenomena, shape and movement model of rain is constructed based on the laws of physics, snowflake curve is drawn using LS grammar and IFS algorithm, cloud is simulated by fractal interpolation algorithm, fog effect is generated using atomizing function, thus simulation of common weather phenomena is realized with the help of OpenGL and particle system. Meantime, advantages and disadvantages of the achieving methods are analyzed and summarized.Secondly, basic geographical information, weather data, simulated weather animation and other information are integrated based on the unique secondary development of Google Earth, Google Earth COM API and KML landmark document. Various types of data information of the system are managed synthetically by SQL Server2005database.Finally, the environmental and functional testing is realized to guarantee the system’s safe and reliable operation.Considering the actual needs of the public, the system provides users with the visual query for real-time weather information of major domestic cities. Weather animation corresponding to the real-time weather information will be displayed on the city background while inquiring. Therefore, weather phenomenon, such as rain and snow obtained by traditional visual simulation can be updated dynamically in the system, which makes weather information and geographical information be superimposed organically and has great real-time and intuitive performance.