Adaptive Grids for Weather and Climate Models

An adaptive grid technique has been applied to a revised version of NCAR/NASA’s next generation dynamical core for climate and weather research. This hydrostatic so-called Lin-Rood dynamics package is based on a conservative and monotonic finite volume discretization in flux form. The adaptive model design utilizes a spherical adaptive-grid library which is based on a cache-efficient block-structured data layout. The dynamical core is run in two configurations: the full 3D hydrostatic dynamical core on the sphere and the corresponding 2D shallow water model. This shallow water setup serves as an ideal testbed for the horizontal discretization and the 2D adaptive-mesh strategy. The static and dynamic adaptations are tested using a standard shallow water test suite and two idealized 3D baroclinic wave test cases.