Hi Eric,
Thanks for being willing to look at the data of this problem--I will send it to you directly via email. I was struggling to make sense of the Crosscovariance Cloud result (obviously).
I agree with you that points closer to each other ought to be more similar. Without much luck, I have been searching high and low in the literature and on the web for usage and interpretation of this geostatistical technique in ArcGIS. These data are thermal infrared imagery of section of river, and results of the "area solar radiation" tool with a high-resolution, LiDAR-based DEM surface.... so it seems likely that there ought to be some relationship between the two... and the raw data suggests this, too. What I have read about cross covariograms and covariance would support that hypothesis.
Thanks very much for your assistance with this. Please let me know if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing about what you find.
Regards, Will.
P.S. I restarted the software, and the graphic of the Crosscovariance Surface about which you were concerned appeared, so no problem there.