PNNL

Abstract

In our study of regional climate modeling and simulation, we frequently encounter vector fields that are crowded with large numbers of critical points. A critical point in a flow is where vector field vanishes. While these critical points accurately reflect topology of the vector fields, in our study only a subset them is worth further investigation. We present a filtering tech-nique based on the vorticity of the vector fields to eliminate less interesting and sometimes sporadic critical points in a mul-tiresolution fashion. The neighboring regions of the preserved features, which are characterized by strong shear and circulation, potential locations of weather instability. We apply our fea-ture-filtering technique to a regional climate modeling data covering East Asia in the summer of 1991.