Two conservative multi-tracer efficient semi-Lagrangian schemes for multiple processor systems integrated in a spectral element (climate) dynamical core

Abstract

Abstract In today’s atmospheric numerical modeling, scalable and highly accurate numerical schemes are of particular interest. To address these issues Galerkin schemes, such as the spectral element method, have received more attention in the last decade. They also provide other state-of-the-art capabilities such as improved conservation. However, the tracer transport of hundreds of tracers, e.g., in the chemistry version of the Community Atmosphere Model, is still a performance bottleneck. Therefore, we consider two conservative semi-Lagrangian schemes. Both are designed to be multi-tracer efficient, third order accurate, and allow significantly longer time steps than explicit Eulerian formulations. We address the difficulties arising on the cubed-sphere projection and on parallel computers and show the high scalability of our approach. Additionally, we use the two schemes for the transport of passive tracers in a dynamical core and compare our results with a current spectral element tracer transport advection used by the High-Order Method Modeling Environment.