A zonally symmetric model for the monsoon-Hadley circulation with stochastic convective forcing

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• 作者：Michèle De La Chevrotière ; Boualem Khouider
• 关键词：Climate science ; Reduced models ; Monsoon ; Hyperbolic equations ; Numerical methods stochastic convection ; Hadley circulation
• 刊名：Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：31
• 期：1
• 页码：89-110
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Physics and Astronomy
• 刊物主题：Engineering Fluid Dynamics; Classical and Continuum Physics; Computational Science and Engineering;
• 出版者：Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• ISSN：1432-2250
• 卷排序：31

文摘

Idealized models of reduced complexity are important tools to understand key processes underlying a complex system. In climate science in particular, they are important for helping the community improve our ability to predict the effect of climate change on the earth system. Climate models are large computer codes based on the discretization of the fluid dynamics equations on grids of horizontal resolution in the order of 100 km, whereas unresolved processes are handled by subgrid models. For instance, simple models are routinely used to help understand the interactions between small-scale processes due to atmospheric moist convection and large-scale circulation patterns. Here, a zonally symmetric model for the monsoon circulation is presented and solved numerically. The model is based on the Galerkin projection of the primitive equations of atmospheric synoptic dynamics onto the first modes of vertical structure to represent free tropospheric circulation and is coupled to a bulk atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) model. The model carries bulk equations for water vapor in both the free troposphere and the ABL, while the processes of convection and precipitation are represented through a stochastic model for clouds. The model equations are coupled through advective nonlinearities, and the resulting system is not conservative and not necessarily hyperbolic. This makes the design of a numerical method for the solution of this system particularly difficult. Here, we develop a numerical scheme based on the operator time-splitting strategy, which decomposes the system into three pieces: a conservative part and two purely advective parts, each of which is solved iteratively using an appropriate method. The conservative system is solved via a central scheme, which does not require hyperbolicity since it avoids the Riemann problem by design. One of the advective parts is a hyperbolic diagonal matrix, which is easily handled by classical methods for hyperbolic equations, while the other advective part is a nilpotent matrix, which is solved via the method of lines. Validation tests using a synthetic exact solution are presented, and formal second-order convergence under grid refinement is demonstrated. Moreover, the model is tested under realistic monsoon conditions, and the ability of the model to simulate key features of the monsoon circulation is illustrated in two distinct parameter regimes.