Toward a Numerical Laboratory for Investigations of Gravity Wave–Mean Flow Interactions in the Atmosphere

Abstract

AbstractIdealized integral studies of the dynamics of atmospheric inertia–gravity waves (IGWs) from their sources in the troposphere (e.g., by spontaneous emission from jets and fronts) to dissipation and mean flow effects at higher altitudes could contribute to a better treatment of these processes in IGW parameterizations in numerical weather prediction and climate simulation. It seems important that numerical codes applied for this purpose are efficient and focus on the essentials. Therefore, a previously published staggered-grid solver for f-plane soundproof pseudoincompressible dynamics is extended here by two main components. These are 1) a semi-implicit time stepping scheme for the integration of buoyancy and Coriolis effects, and 2) the incorporation of Newtonian heating consistent with pseudoincompressible dynamics. This heating function is used to enforce a temperature profile that is baroclinically unstable in the troposphere and it allows the background state to vary in time. Numerical experiments for several benchmarks are compared against a buoyancy/Coriolis-explicit third-order Runge–Kutta scheme, verifying the accuracy and efficiency of the scheme. Preliminary mesoscale simulations with baroclinic wave activity in the troposphere show intensive small-scale wave activity at high altitudes, and they also indicate there the expected reversal of the zonal-mean zonal winds.