He describes one goal of the process as automating detection of features and then seeing if it is possible to extract and predict correlations and irregularities over a large time scale. The final operator combines the minima and wind values to track the cyclone. He explains that over 10 years of the model run, the user might obtain a few thousand cyclones. The Muntz team has produced several telling visualizations of cyclone tracks. In one, a world map outlined in white against a black background serves as a backdrop for eruptions of red slivers, which mark the cyclones' paths.
Visualization is particularly useful for comparing different climate models.
Mesrobian says that since scientists know where cyclones occur from observations, they can test the relative accuracies of the models. Blocking Events A blocking event is a class of persistent anomaly in which the westerly jet stream in mid-latitudes splits in two and remains in this condition for 10 days or so. He says that scientists want to predict or understand the dynamics of typical patterns as well as why there would be deviations from the usual blocking pattern. From an initial 1 gigabyte of raw information, they found between 175,000 and 620,000 grid points with a strong blocking signal, which represent approximately 50 blocking events. For example, scientists might want to know if the occurrence of 10 events in a certain place over 5 years is correlated with 20 events occurring in another location.