A Non-Iterative Procedure for the Time Integration of the Balance Equations

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Recent work by Gent and McWilliams (1982) suggests that of all models intermediate in complexity between quasi-geostrophic (QG) and primitive equation (PE), the balance equations (BE) have the best performance when compared with the standard of the PE. The BE system [and the simpler linear balance equations (LBE)] have been infrequently integrated during the past 30 years because of problems with solvability conditions and the apparent necessity for iteration each timestep. The present article proposes a non-iterative procedure for the time integration of the BE and LBE systems. The procedure was tested on the barotropic (vertically integrated) equations on the sphere. High-resolution BE, LBE and QG integrations were compared with a control PE integration initialized with observed data. The growth of error in the various models as a function of time, latitude and scale was carefully monitored. The high accuracy of the BE equations was confirmed.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: