A standard test set for numerical approximations to the shallow water equations in spherical geometry

Abstract

A suite of seven test cases is proposed for the evaluation of numerical methods intended for the solution of the shallow water equations in spherical geometry. The shallow water equations exhibit the major difficulties associated with the horizontal dynamical aspects of atmospheric modeling on the spherical earth. These cases are designed for use in the evaluation of numerical methods proposed for climate modeling and to identify the potential trade-offs which must always be made in numerical modeling. Before a proposed scheme is applied to a full baroclinic atmospheric model it must perform well on these problems in comparison with other currently accepted numerical methods. The cases are presented in order of complexity. They consist of advection across the poles, steady state geostrophically balanced flow of both global and local scales, forced nonlinear advection of an isolated low, zonal flow impinging on an isolated mountain, Rossby-Haurwitz waves, and observed atmospheric states. One of the cases is also identified as a computer performance/algorithm efficiency benchmark for assessing the performance of algorithms adapted to massively parallel computers.