VAPOR

VAPOR is an interactive 3‑D visualization and analysis platform designed for researchers working with ocean, atmosphere, and solar data. It runs on UNIX and Windows systems equipped with modern graphics cards, offering the ability to create animations and still images from large simulation outputs. The software supports direct import of common scientific formats such as WRF, MOM, POP, ROMS, GRIB, and NetCDF.

The core of VAPOR is the VAPOR Data Collection (VDC) model, which enables progressive access to data fidelity and allows terascale datasets to be visualized on commodity hardware. Users can employ the built‑in interactive Python interpreter to generate, modify, and render new variables derived from input model data, facilitating ad‑hoc analysis within the same environment.

Developed by the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Computational and Information Systems Lab, VAPOR is maintained with support from the National Science Foundation and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information. It is distributed as a stable macOS core product, with source and binaries available through the project website.