This talk will provide a broad overview of the unique capabilities of NCAR’s visual, scientific data analysis package, VAPOR (www.vapor.ucar.edu). VAPOR provides a desktop solution for qualitatively and quantitatively interrogating high-resolution numerical simulation outputs. The development of VAPOR is guided by an international steering committee comprised of researchers working in the atmospheric and related sciences. VAPOR’s feature set is thus strongly tailored towards the needs of this community. Also discussed will be VAPOR’s wavelet-based progressive access data model: an intelligent approach to handling large data sets, whose generality may have applicability far beyond the VAPOR desktop application.