Conforming quadrilaterals meshes on the cubed sphere.
The cubed sphere geometry, obtained by inscribing a cube in a sphere and mapping points between the two surfaces using a gnomonic (central) projection, is commonly used in atmospheric models because it is free of polar singularities and is well-suited for parallel computing. Global meshes on the cubed-sphere typically project uniform (square) grids from each face of the cube onto the sphere, and if refinement is desired then it is done with non-conforming meshes - overlaying the area of interest with a finer uniform mesh, which introduces so-called hanging nodes on edges along the boundary of the fine resolution area. An alternate technique is to tile each face of the cube with quadrilaterals without requiring the quads to be rectangular. These meshes allow for refinement in areas of interest with a conforming mesh, providing a smoother transition between high and low resolution portions of the grid than non-conforming refinement. The conforming meshes are demonstrated in HOMME, NCAR's High Order Method Modeling Environment, where two modifications have been made: the dependence on uniform meshes has been removed, and the ability to read arbitrary quadrilateral meshes from a previously-generated file has been added. Numerical results come from a conservative spectral element method modeling a selection of the standard shallow water test cases.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 1028391
- Report Number(s):
- SAND2010-5632C; TRN: US201122%%259
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Proposed for presentation at the 2010 Workshop on the Solution of Partial Differential Equations on the [Cubed-]Sphere held August 24-27, 2010 in Potsdam, Germany.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Introducing Enabling Computational Tools to the Climate Sciences: Multi-Resolution Climate Modeling with Adaptive Cubed-Sphere Grids
Implementation of the Vector Vorticity Dynamical Core on Cubed Sphere for Use in the Quasi‐3‐D Multiscale Modeling Framework