A global transport model is proposed in which a multimoment constrained finite volume (MCV) scheme is applied to a Yin-Yang overset grid. The MCV scheme defines 16 degrees of freedom (DOFs) within each element to build a 2D cubic reconstruction polynomial. The time evolution equations for DOFs are derived from constraint conditions on moments of line-integrated averages (LIA), point values (PV), and values of first-order derivatives (DV). The Yin-Yang grid eliminates polar singularities and results in a quasi-uniform mesh. A limiting projection is designed to remove nonphysical oscillations around discontinuities. Our model was tested against widely used benchmarks; the competitive results reveal that the model is accurate and promising for developing general circulation models.
Semi-implicit algorithms are popularly used to deal with the gravitational term in numerical models. In this paper, we adopt the method of characteristics to compute the solutions for gravity waves on a sphere directly using a semi-Lagrangian advection scheme instead of the semi-implicit method in a shallow water model, to avoid expensive matrix inversions. Adoption of the semi-Lagrangian scheme renders the numerical model always stable for any Courant number, and which saves CPU time. To illustrate the effciency of the characteristic constrained interpolation profile (CIP) method, some numerical results are shown for idealized test cases on a sphere in the Yin-Yang grid system.
