Revisiting wavelet compression for large-scale climate data using JPEG 2000 and ensuring data precision

We revisit wavelet compression by using a standards-based method to reduce large-scale data sizes for production scientific computing. Many of the bottlenecks in visualization and analysis come from limited bandwidth in data movement, from storage to networks. The majority of the processing time for visualization and analysis is spent reading or writing large-scale data or moving data from a remote site in a distance scenario. Using wavelet compression in JPEG 2000, we provide a mechanism to vary data transfer time versus data quality, so that a domain expert can improve data transfer time while quantifying compression effects on their data. By using a standards-based method, we are able to provide scientists with the state-of-the-art wavelet compression from the signal processing and data compression community, suitable for use in a production computing environment. To quantify compression effects, we focus on measuring bit rate versus maximum error as a quality metric to provide precision guarantees for scientific analysis on remotely compressed POP (Parallel Ocean Program) data.