Over recent years, several visualization tools that offer advanced three‐dimensional (3D) rendering techniques, while still showing good performance for large data sets, have been developed. However, how to provide an intuitive way to combine traditional two‐dimensional (2D) methods essential in operational weather forecasting and new 3D techniques welcomed in atmospheric research is not fully investigated, if not overlooked, in these tools. The paper presents MeteoExplorer: a software tool designed to analyse and visualize atmospheric and geoscience data. It consists of a developer‐orientedcross‐platform foundation framework and several applications built upon the framework. The framework is developed with C++ on the central processing unit side and shader languages on the graphics processing unit (GPU) side. Modules in the framework are loosely coupled with minimum interdependencies to facilitate code reuse and improve code efficiency. Compared with other software tools, the framework provides distinctive features, including a unified framework that integrates both 2D and 3D rendering context, comprehensive support of popular data formats and computing platforms, decent rendition quality via the export of vector graphics and page layout customization, and interactive composition of synoptic charts. Based on the foundation libraries, the software can develop web, desktop and mobile applications for meteorological purposes. These applications support the analysis and visualization of numerous data set types, as well as the interactive content creation. MeteoExplorer is an exploratory project that provides forecasters with new techniques for climate diagnosis and forecasts.

中文翻译：

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MeteoExplorer：面向大气和地球科学家的可视数据分析软件

近年来，已经开发了几种提供高级三维（3D）渲染技术的可视化工具，同时仍显示大型数据集的良好性能。但是，如何提供一种直观的方法来结合操作天气预报中必不可少的传统二维（2D）方法和大气研究中受欢迎的新3D技术，这些工具并未得到充分研究，即使它未被忽视。本文介绍了MeteoExplorer：一种旨在分析和可视化大气和地球科学数据的软件工具。它由面向开发人员的跨平台基础框架和在该框架上构建的多个应用程序组成。该框架是使用C ++在中央处理单元侧以及着色器语言在图形处理单元（GPU）侧开发的。框架中的模块以最小的相互依赖关系松散地耦合在一起，以促进代码重用并提高代码效率。与其他软件工具相比，该框架提供了独特的功能，包括一个集成了2D和3D渲染上下文的统一框架，对流行数据格式和计算平台的全面支持，不错的再现质量通过导出矢量图形和页面布局自定义，以及摘要图表的交互式组合。该软件基于基础库，可以开发用于气象目的的Web，桌面和移动应用程序。这些应用程序支持多种数据集类型的分析和可视化，以及交互式内容的创建。MeteoExplorer是一个探索性项目，为预报员提供气候诊断和预报的新技术。