The hybrid vertical coordinate that has been implemented in CAM 3.0 is described in this section. The hybrid coordinate was developed by Simmons and Strüfing [158] in order to provide a general framework for a vertical coordinate which is terrain following at the Earth's surface, but reduces to a pressure coordinate at some point above the surface. The hybrid coordinate is more general in concept than the modified scheme of Sangster [155], which is used in the GFDL SKYHI model. However, the hybrid coordinate is normally specified in such a way that the two coordinates are identical.
The following description uses the same general development as Simmons and Strüfing [158], who based their development on the generalized vertical coordinate of Kasahara [84]. A specific form of the coordinate (the hybrid coordinate) is introduced at the latest possible point. The description here differs from Simmons and Strüfing [158] in allowing for an upper boundary at finite height (nonzero pressure), as in the original development by Kasahara. Such an upper boundary may be required when the equations are solved using vertical finite differences.
Deriving the primitive equations in a generalized terrain-following vertical coordinate requires only that certain basic properties of the coordinate be specified. If the surface pressure is , then we require the generalized coordinate to satisfy:
Given the above description of the coordinate, the continuous system
of equations can be written following Kasahara [84] and
Simmons and Strüfing [158]. The prognostic equations are:
In addition to the prognostic equations, three diagnostic equations are required:
Equations (3.1)-(3.16) are the complete set which must be solved by a GCM. However, in order to solve them, the function must be specified. In advance of actually specifying , the equations will be cast in a more convenient form. Most of the changes to the equations involve simple applications of the chain rule for derivatives, in order to obtain terms that will be easy to evaluate using the predicted variables in the model. For example, terms involving horizontal derivatives of must be converted to terms involving only and horizontal derivatives of . The former can be evaluated once the function is specified.
The vertical advection terms in (3.5), (3.6), (3.8), and (3.9) may be rewritten as:
The integrals which appear in (3.7), (3.15), and (3.16) can be written more conveniently by expanding the kernel as
The original primitive equations (3.3)-(3.7), together
with (3.8), (3.9), and (3.14)-(3.16)
can now be rewritten with the aid of (3.17), (3.18),
and (3.22).
In the actual definition of the hybrid coordinate, it is not necessary to specify explicitly, since (3.23)-(3.32) only requires that and be determined. It is sufficient to specify and to let be defined implicitly. This will be done in section 3.1.7. In the case that and , (3.23)-(3.32) can be reduced to the set of equations solved by CCM1.
In practice, the solutions generated by solving the above equations are excessively noisy. This problem appears to arise from aliasing problems in the hydrostatic equation (3.30). The integral introduces a high order nonlinearity which enters directly into the divergence equation (3.24). Large gravity waves are generated in the vicinity of steep orography, such as in the Pacific Ocean west of the Andes.
The noise problem is solved by converting the equations given above, which use as a prognostic variable, to equations using . This results in the hydrostatic equation becoming only quadratically nonlinear except for moisture contributions to virtual temperature. Since the spectral transform method will be used to solve the equations, gradients will be obtained during the transform from wave to grid space. Outside of the prognostic equation for , all terms involving will then appear as .
Equations (3.23)-(3.32) become:
The model described by (3.33)-(3.42), without the horizontal diffusion terms, together with boundary conditions (3.1) and (3.2), is integrated in time using the semi-implicit leapfrog scheme described below. The semi-implicit form of the time differencing will be applied to (3.34) and (3.36) without the horizontal diffusion sources, and to (3.37). In order to derive the semi-implicit form, one must linearize these equations about a reference state. Isolating the terms that will have their linear parts treated implicitly, the prognostic equations (3.33), (3.34), and (3.37) may be rewritten as:
In order to linearize (3.46)-(3.48), one specifies a reference state for temperature and pressure, then expands the equations about the reference state:
Expanding (3.46)-(3.48) about the reference state (3.49)-(3.51) and retaining only the linear terms explicitly, one obtains:
We will assume that centered differences are to be used for the nonlinear terms, and the linear terms are to be treated implicitly by averaging the previous and next time steps. Finite differences are used in the vertical, and are described in the following sections. At this stage only some very general properties of the finite difference representation must be specified. A layering structure is assumed in which field values are predicted on layer midpoints denoted by an integer index, (see Figure 3.1). The interface between and is denoted by a half-integer index, . The model top is at , and the Earth's surface is at . It is further assumed that vertical integrals may be written as a matrix (of order ) times a column vector representing the values of a field at the grid points in the vertical. The column vectors representing a vertical column of grid points will be denoted by underbars, the matrices will be denoted by bold-faced capital letters, and superscript will denote the vector transpose.
The finite difference forms of (3.52)-(3.54) may then be written down as:
We shall impose a requirement on the vertical finite differences of the model that they conserve the global integral of total energy in the absence of sources and sinks. We need to derive equations for kinetic and internal energy in order to impose this constraint. The momentum equations (more painfully, the vorticity and divergence equations) without the and contributions, can be combined with the continuity equation
The vertical integral of the second (vertical) transport term on the right-hand side of (3.60) should vanish. Since this term is obtained from the vertical advection terms for momentum, which will be finite differenced, we can construct a finite difference operator that will ensure that the vertical integral vanishes.
The vertical advection terms are the product of a vertical velocity
(
) and the vertical derivative of a
field (
). The vertical velocity is defined in
terms of vertical integrals of fields (3.42), which are
naturally taken to interfaces. The vertical derivatives are also
naturally taken to interfaces, so the product is formed there, and
then adjacent interface values of the products are averaged to give a
midpoint value. It is the definition of the average that must be
correct in order to conserve kinetic energy under vertical advection
in (3.60). The derivation will be omitted here, the resulting
vertical advection terms are of the form:
The last two terms in (3.60) contain the conversion between
kinetic and internal (potential) energy and the form drag. Neglecting
the transport terms, under assumption that global integrals will be
taken, noting that
, and substituting for the geopotential
using (3.40), (3.60) can be written as:
We now turn to the internal energy equation, obtained by combining the thermodynamic equation (3.36), without the , , and terms, and the continuity equation (3.59):
The rate of change of total energy due to internal processes is obtained by adding (3.65) and (3.67) and must vanish. The first terms on the right-hand side of (3.65) and (3.67) obviously cancel in the continuous form. When the equations are discretized in the vertical, the terms will still cancel, providing that the same definition is used for in the nonlinear terms of the vorticity and divergence equations (3.38) and (3.39), and in the term of (3.36) and (3.42).
The second terms on the right-hand side of (3.65) and (3.67) must also cancel in the global mean. This cancellation is enforced locally in the horizontal on the column integrals of (3.65) and (3.67), so that we require:
(3.73) |
Given the definitions of vertical integrals in (3.70) and (3.71) and of vertical advection in (3.61) and (3.62) the model will conserve energy as long as we require that and satisfy (3.75). We are, of course, still neglecting lack of conservation due to the truncation of the horizontal spherical harmonic expansions.
CAM 3.0 contains a horizontal diffusion term for , and to prevent spectral blocking and to provide reasonable kinetic energy spectra. The horizontal diffusion operator in CAM 3.0 is also used to ensure that the CFL condition is not violated in the upper layers of the model. The horizontal diffusion is a linear form on surfaces in the top three levels of the model and a linear form with a partial correction to pressure surfaces for temperature elsewhere. The diffusion near the model top is used as a simple sponge to absorb vertically propagating planetary wave energy and also to control the strength of the stratospheric winter jets. The diffusion coefficient has a vertical variation which has been tuned to give reasonable Northern and Southern Hemisphere polar night jets.
In the top three model levels, the form of the horizontal diffusion is given by
The horizontal diffusion operator is better applied to pressure surfaces than to terrain-following surfaces (applying the operator on isentropic surfaces would be still better). Although the governing system of equations derived above is designed to reduce to pressure surfaces above some level, problems can still occur from diffusion along the lower surfaces. Partial correction to pressure surfaces of harmonic horizontal diffusion ( ) can be included using the relations:
The following finite-difference description details only the forecast given by (3.87) and (3.90). The finite-difference form of the forecast equation for water vapor will be presented later in Section 3c. The general structure of the complete finite difference equations is determined by the semi-implicit time differencing and the energy conservation properties described above. In order to complete the specification of the finite differencing, we require a definition of the vertical coordinate. The actual specification of the generalized vertical coordinate takes advantage of the structure of the equations (3.33)-(3.42). The equations can be finite-differenced in the vertical and, in time, without having to know the value of anywhere. The quantities that must be known are and at the grid points. Therefore the coordinate is defined implicitly through the relation:
The finite difference forms of the Dyn operator
(3.33)-(3.42), including semi-implicit time
integration are:
(3.113) |
The spectral transform method is used in the horizontal exactly as in CCM1. As shown earlier, the vertical and temporal aspects of the model are represented by finite-difference approximations. The horizontal aspects are treated by the spectral-transform method, which is described in this section. Thus, at certain points in the integration, the prognostic variables and are represented in terms of coefficients of a truncated series of spherical harmonic functions, while at other points they are given by grid-point values on a corresponding Gaussian grid. In general, physical parameterizations and nonlinear operations are carried out in grid-point space. Horizontal derivatives and linear operations are performed in spectral space. Externally, the model appears to the user to be a grid-point model, as far as data required and produced by it. Similarly, since all nonlinear parameterizations are developed and carried out in grid-point space, the model also appears as a grid-point model for the incorporation of physical parameterizations, and the user need not be too concerned with the spectral aspects. For users interested in diagnosing the balance of terms in the evolution equations, however, the details are important and care must be taken to understand which terms have been spectrally truncated and which have not. The algebra involved in the spectral transformations has been presented in several publications [24,46,118]. In this report, we present only the details relevant to the model code; for more details and general philosophy, the reader is referred to these earlier papers.
The horizontal representation of an arbitrary variable consists of a truncated series of spherical harmonic functions,
The associated Legendre polynomials used in the model are normalized such that
The coefficients of the spectral representation (3.114) are given by
The Gaussian grid used for the north-south transformation is generally chosen to allow un-aliased computations of quadratic terms only. In this case, the number of Gaussian latitudes must satisfy
Although in the next section of this model description, we continue to indicate the Gaussian quadrature as a sum from pole to pole, the code actually deals with the symmetric and antisymmetric components of variables and accumulates the sums from equator to pole only. The model requires an even number of latitudes to easily use the symmetry conditions. This may be slightly inefficient for some spectral resolutions. We define a new index, which goes from at the point next to the south pole to at the point next to the north pole and not including 0 (there are no points at the equator or pole in the Gaussian grid), i.e., let and for and for ; then the summation in (3.120) can be rewritten as
The model uses the spectral transform method [118] for all nonlinear terms. However, the model can be thought of as starting from grid-point values at time (consistent with the spectral representation) and producing a forecast of the grid-point values at time (again, consistent with the spectral resolution). The forecast procedure involves computation of the nonlinear terms including physical parameterizations at grid points; transformation via Gaussian quadrature of the nonlinear terms from grid-point space to spectral space; computation of the spectral coefficients of the prognostic variables at time (with the implied spectral truncation to the model resolution); and transformation back to grid-point space. The details of the equations involved in the various transformations are given in the next section.
In order to describe the transformation to spectral space, for each equation we first group together all undifferentiated explicit terms, all explicit terms with longitudinal derivatives, and all explicit terms with meridional derivatives appearing in the Dyn operator. Thus, the vorticity equation (3.95) is rewritten
Formally, Equations (3.131)-(3.137) are transformed to spectral space by performing the operations indicated in (3.146) to each term. We see that the equations basically contain three types of terms, for example, in the vorticity equation the undifferentiated term , the longitudinally differentiated term , and the meridionally differentiated term . All terms in the original equations were grouped into one of these terms on the Gaussian grid so that they could be transformed at once.
Transformation of the undifferentiated term is obtained by straightforward application of (3.118)-(3.120),
(3.147) | ||
(3.148) | ||
(3.149) |
The latitudinally differentiated term is handled by integration by parts using zero boundary conditions at the poles:
(3.151) | ||
(3.152) |
The prognostic equations can be converted to spectral form by summation over the Gaussian grid using (3.146), (3.150), and (3.154). The resulting equation for absolute vorticity is
The spectral form of the divergence equation (3.135) becomes
Equation (3.157) for vorticity is explicit and complete at this point. However, the remaining equations (3.159)-(3.163) are coupled. They are solved by eliminating all variables except :
As mentioned earlier, the horizontal diffusion in (3.88) and (3.91) is computed implicitly via time splitting after the transformations into spectral space and solution of the semi-implicit equations. In the following, the and equations have a similar form, so we write only the equation:
The extra term is present in (3.167), (3.171) and (3.173) to prevent damping of uniform rotations. The solutions are just
The diffusion of is not complete at this stage. In order to make the partial correction from to in (3.82) local, it is not included until grid-point values are available. This requires that also be transformed from spectral to grid-point space. The values of the coefficients and for the standard T42 resolution are msec and msec, respectively.
Occasionally, with poorly balanced initial conditions, the model exhibits numerical instability during the beginning of an integration because of excessive noise in the solution. Therefore, an optional divergence damping is included in the model to be applied over the first few days. The damping has an initial e-folding time of and linearly decreases to 0 over a specified number of days, , usually set to be 2. The damping is computed implicitly via time splitting after the horizontal diffusion.
After the prognostic variables are completed at time in spectral space , , , they are transformed to grid space. For a variable , the transformation is given by
The horizontal diffusion tendencies are also transformed back to grid space. The spectral coefficients for the horizontal diffusion tendencies follow from (3.167) and (3.168):
After grid-point values are calculated, frictional heating rates are determined from the momentum diffusion tendencies and are added to the temperature, and the partial correction of the diffusion from to surfaces is applied to . The frictional heating rate is calculated from the kinetic energy tendency produced by the momentum diffusion
(3.194) | ||
(3.195) | ||
(3.196) |
The corrections are added to the diffusion tendencies calculated earlier (3.188) to give the total temperature tendency for diagnostic purposes:
The forecast equation for water vapor specific humidity and constituent mixing ratio in the system is from (3.36) excluding sources and sinks.
The parameterizations are time-split in the moisture equation. The tendency sources have already been added to the time level . The semi-Lagrangian advection step is subdivided into horizontal and vertical advection sub-steps, which, in an Eulerian form, would be written
The horizontal departure points are found by first iterating for the mid-point of the trajectory, using winds at time , and a first guess as the location of the mid-point of the previous time step
Once the iteration of (3.204) and (3.205) is complete, the departure point is given by
The form given by (3.204)-(3.207) is inaccurate near the
poles and thus is only used for arrival points equatorward of
70 latitude. Poleward of 70 we transform to a local
geodesic coordinate for the calculation at each arrival point. The
local geodesic coordinate is essentially a rotated spherical
coordinate system whose equator goes through the arrival point.
Details are provided in Williamson and Rasch [186]. The transformed system
is rotated about the axis through
and
, by an
angle so the equator goes through
. The longitude of the transformed system is chosen
to be zero at the arrival point. If the local geodesic system is
denoted by
, with
velocities
, the two systems are
related by
The interpolants are most easily defined on the interval 0 . Define
Following (3.2.12) and (3.2.13) of Hildebrand [71], the Lagrangian cubic polynomial interpolant used for the velocity interpolation, is given by
The derivative approximations used in (3.214) for are obtained by differentiating (3.215) with respect to , replacing by and evaluating the result at equal and . With these derivative estimates, the Hermite cubic interpolant (3.214) is equivalent to the Lagrangian (3.215). If we denote the four point stencil by the cubic derivative estimates are
The two dimensional interpolant is obtained as a tensor product application of the one-dimensional interpolants, with interpolations done first. Assume the departure point falls in the grid box and . Four interpolations are performed to find values at , , , and . This is followed by one interpolation in using these four values to obtain the value at . Cyclic continuity is used in longitude. In latitude, the grid is extended to include a pole point (row) and one row across the pole. The pole row is set equal to the average of the row next to the pole for and to wavenumber 1 components for and . The row across the pole is filled with the values from the first row below the pole shifted in longitude for and minus the value shifted by in longitude for and .
Once the departure point is known, the constituent value of is obtained as indicated in (3.202) by Hermite cubic interpolation (3.214), with cubic derivative estimates (3.215) and (3.216) modified to satisfy the Sufficient Condition for Monotonicity with C continuity (SCMO) described below. Define by
The horizontal semi-Lagrangian sub-step (3.202) is followed by the vertical step (3.203). The vertical velocity is obtained from that diagnosed in the dynamical calculations (3.94) by
This section describes original and modified fixers used for the Eulerian and semi-Lagrangian dynamical cores.
Let , and denote the values of air mass, pressure intervals, and water vapor specific humidity at the beginning of the time step (which are the same as the values at the end of the previous time step.)
, and are the values after fixers are applied at the end of the time step.
, and are the values after the parameterizations have updated the moisture field and tracers.
Since the physics parameterizations do not change the surface pressure, and are also the values at the beginning of the time step.
The fixers which ensure conservation are applied to the dry
atmospheric mass, water vapor specific humidity and constituent mixing
ratios. For water vapor and atmospheric mass the desired discrete
relations, following Williamson and Olson [185] are
We note that there is a small error in (3.241). Consider a situation in which moisture is transported by a physical parameterization, but there is no source or sink of moisture. Under this circumstance , but the surface pressure is not allowed to change. Since , there is an implied change of dry mass of dry air in the layer, and even in circumstances where there is no change of dry mixing ratio there would be an implied change in mass of the tracer. The solution to this inconsistency is to define a dry air mass only once within the model time step, and use it consistently throughout the model. In this revision, we have chosen to fix the dry air mass in the model time step where the surface pressure is updated, e.g. at the end of the model time step. Therefore, we now replace (3.241) with
There is a corresponding change in the first term of the numerator of (3.243) in which is replace by . CAM 3.0uses (3.243) for water substances and constituents affecting the temperature field to prevent changes to the IPCC simulations. In the future, constituent fields may use a corrected version of (3.243).
(3.246) | ||
(3.247) |
(3.248) |
(3.249) |
(3.250) |
(3.251) | |||
(3.252) | |||
(3.253) |
(3.254) |
global rms | (3.258) | |
global rms | (3.259) | |
global rms | (3.260) | |
global average mass times | (3.261) | |
global average mass of moisture | (3.262) |