Interactive visualization of ocean flow and thermohaline field based on collaborative transfer function

The interactions between scalar and vector properties is vital in oceanic phenomena and energy/material circulation processes. This study integrates scalar and vector fields in ocean visualization to clarify their interplay and proposes a standardized approach for designing transfer functions that simplify ocean feature extraction. An interactive collaborative transfer function operational mode was introduced to visualise the scalar and vector fields, effectively capturing the dynamic characteristics of oceanic phenomena under mutual influence. Using the high-resolution GLORYS12V1 marine dataset, we visualized thermohaline fields and currents. Results show that the collaborative visualisation method and standardized transfer function effectively extract morphological outlines of ocean fronts and mesoscale eddies. Furthermore, the real-time collaborative transfer function reveals high spatial and directional consistency between ocean fronts (extracted via a 0.05 °C/km temperature gradient threshold) and Kuroshio axes (identified using a 0.1 m/s flow velocity threshold), which highlights the barrier effect of ocean fronts on meridional heat exchange. Additionally, we revealed the dynamic entrainment and transport capability of energy and material in mesoscale eddies. The above results demonstrate that the proposed synergistic transfer function in this study can effectively uncover the key role of scalar-vector field interactions in the evolution of oceanic phenomena.