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Jian-Hua Qian
,
Fredrick H. M. Semazzi
, and
Jeffrey S. Scroggs

Abstract

A global nonhydrostatic semi-implicit semi-Lagrangian (SISL) atmospheric model with orography has been developed. The height-based terrain-following σ z coordinate of Gal-Chen and Somerville is used to incorporate the orography. A 3D vector form of the SISL formulation is proposed. It is based on the complete Navier–Stokes equations. The model is stable for large time steps of up to 1 h at horizontal/vertical resolution of 2.8125°/1200 m. Isolated bell-shaped mountain profiles and real orography are employed to evaluate the model performance. The sensitivity of the model with orography to the order of accuracy of the uncentering scheme, the reference temperature ( T ), and size of the time step are similar to that of the model without orography described in Semazzi et al. The authors find that for successful execution of the model, it is important that the orographic height Z s , the reference state mass variable ( q s ), and T satisfy the hydrostatic balance relationship in the terrain-following σ z coordinate system. This formulation effectively controls the generation of unphysical orographic induced computational noise usually encountered in connection with semi-Lagrangian models. The global model used here is based on the complete dynamical Navier–Stokes equations, however, it is run at coarse resolutions, for which nonhydrostatic effects are negligible. In the future, when the computing resources permit, the model will be a valuable vehicle for investigating the role of multiple-scale interaction, including the effects of nonhydrostatic dynamics.

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Ramachandran D. Nair
,
Jeffrey S. Scroggs
, and
Fredrick H. M. Semazzi

Abstract

A computationally efficient mass-conservative transport scheme over the sphere is proposed and tested. The scheme combines a conservative finite-volume method with an efficient semi-Lagrangian scheme based on the dimension splitting “cascade” method. In the regions near the poles where the conservative cascade procedure breaks down, a globally conservative, but locally approximate scheme is used. This procedure is currently restricted to polar meridional Courant numbers less than one. The resulting conservative cascade scheme is evaluated using a solid-body rotation test and deformational flow test, and found to be both accurate and efficient. Compared to the traditional semi-Lagrangian scheme employing a bicubic-Lagrange interpolator, the proposed scheme is considerably more accurate and almost twice as fast while conserving mass exactly.

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Frederick H. M. Semazzi
,
Jian-Hua Qian
, and
Jeffrey S. Scroggs

Abstract

A semi-Lagrangian semi-implicit finite-difference nonhydrostatic global atmospheric model on a flat terrain has been developed. Starting from the initialized ECMWF analysis of 0000 UTC 15 January 1979, a series of 5-day test runs have been performed. The global nonhydrostatic model is stable and preserves the characteristics of the solution at large finer steps of up to one hour using typical resolution of GCMs. Although use of large time steps does not necessarily guarantee improved efficiency, it is apparent that the new scheme is potentially more efficient than a corresponding Eulerian explicit model that would require time steps two or three orders of magnitude smaller. The present simulations therefore demonstrate the potential computational advantages of the semi-Lagrangian semi-implicit method over the more traditional numerical methods in integrating the fully compressible nonhydrostatic equations of the atmosphere over the entire globe. One of the options adopted in the model to control computational noise is the combination of the traditional first-order-accurate uncentering and the filter proposed by McDonald and Haugen. However, use of second-order-accurate uncentering recently proposed by Rivest et al. is more effective in removing the noise and eliminates the need for the additional filter on the nonlinear terms. This noise, which depends mainly on the magnitude of the nonlinear terms, is found to be quite sensitive to the choice of the constant reference state temperature when first-order-accurate centering is employed. Systematic inspection of the relationship between the distribution of the nonlinear term contribution in the vertical momentum equation and the temperature of the isothermal reference state indicates that must be confined to a narrow range to obtain stable numerical solutions. The sensitivity of stability on the choice of is virtually eliminated introducing second-order-accurate uncentering. There is some indication that it may be desirable to specify as a function of both height and latitude. The model conserves mass and energy well, changing less than 0.05% in 5 days. As expected, at the typical resolution of GCMs, the results for the nonhydrostatic and hydrostatic versions of the model yield practically identical results.

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