Numerical solution of Helmholtz equation of barotropic atmosphere using wavelets

Abstract

The numerical solution of the Helmholtz equation for barotropic atmosphere is estimated by use of the wavelet-Galerkin method. The solution involves the decomposition of a circulant matrix consisting up of 2-term connection coefficients of wavelet scaling functions. Three matrix decompositions, i.e. fast Fourier transformation (FFT), Jacobian and QR decomposition methods, are tested numerically. The Jacobian method has the smallest matrix-reconstruction error with the best orthogonality while the FFT method causes the biggest errors. Numerical result reveals that the numerical solution of the equation is very sensitive to the decomposition methods and the QR and Jacobian decomposition methods, whose errors are of the order of 10−3, much smaller than that with the FFT method, are more suitable to the numerical solution of the equation. With the two methods the solutions are also proved to have much higher accuracy than the iteration solution with the finite difference approximation. In addition, the wavelet numerical method is very useful for the solution of a climate model in low resolution. The solution accuracy of the equation may significantly increase with the order of Daubechies wavelet.