Cubic Spline Collocation Method for the Shallow Water Equations on the Sphere

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Cubic Spline Collocation Method for the Shallow Water Equations on the Sphere
Authors: Layton, Anita T.
Source: Journal of Computational Physics. Jul2002, Vol. 179 Issue 2, p578. 15p.
Subjects: Meteorology, Spherical trigonometry, Finite differences
Abstract: Spatial discretization schemes commonly used in global meteorological applications are currently limited to spectral methods or low-order finite-difference/finite-element methods. The spectral transform method, which yields high-order approximations, requires Legendre transforms, which have a computational complexity of O(N3), where N is the number of subintervals in one dimension. Thus, high-order finite-element methods may be a viable alternative to spectral methods. In this study, we present a new numerical method for solving the shallow water equations (SWE) in spherical coordinates. In this implementation, the SWE are discretized in time with the semi-implicit leapfrog method, and in space with the cubic spline collocation method on a skipped latitude–longitude grid. Numerical results for the Williamson et al. SWE test cases [D. L. Williamson, J. B. Blake, J. J. Hack, R. Jakob, and P. N. Swarztrauber, J. Comput. Phys.102, 211 (1992)] are presented to demonstrate the stability and accuracy of the method. Results are also shown for an efficiency comparison between this method and a similar method in which spatial discretization is done on a uniform latitude–longitude grid. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
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Description
Abstract:Spatial discretization schemes commonly used in global meteorological applications are currently limited to spectral methods or low-order finite-difference/finite-element methods. The spectral transform method, which yields high-order approximations, requires Legendre transforms, which have a computational complexity of O(N3), where N is the number of subintervals in one dimension. Thus, high-order finite-element methods may be a viable alternative to spectral methods. In this study, we present a new numerical method for solving the shallow water equations (SWE) in spherical coordinates. In this implementation, the SWE are discretized in time with the semi-implicit leapfrog method, and in space with the cubic spline collocation method on a skipped latitude–longitude grid. Numerical results for the Williamson et al. SWE test cases [D. L. Williamson, J. B. Blake, J. J. Hack, R. Jakob, and P. N. Swarztrauber, J. Comput. Phys.102, 211 (1992)] are presented to demonstrate the stability and accuracy of the method. Results are also shown for an efficiency comparison between this method and a similar method in which spatial discretization is done on a uniform latitude–longitude grid. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
ISSN:00219991
DOI:10.1006/jcph.2002.7075