No Arabic abstract
We describe discretisations of the shallow water equations on the sphere using the framework of finite element exterior calculus, which are extensions of the mimetic finite difference framework presented in Ringler, Thuburn, Klemp, and Skamarock (Journal of Computational Physics, 2010). The exterior calculus notation provides a guide to which finite element spaces should be used for which physical variables, and unifies a number of desirable properties. We present two formulations: a ``primal formulation in which the finite element spaces are defined on a single mesh, and a ``primal-dual formulation in which finite element spaces on a dual mesh are also used. Both formulations have velocity and layer depth as prognostic variables, but the exterior calculus framework leads to a conserved diagnostic potential vorticity. In both formulations we show how to construct discretisations that have mass-consistent (constant potential vorticity stays constant), stable and oscillation-free potential vorticity advection.
We describe a compatible finite element discretisation for the shallow water equations on the rotating sphere, concentrating on integrating consistent upwind stabilisation into the framework. Although the prognostic variables are velocity and layer depth, the discretisation has a diagnostic potential vorticity that satisfies a stable upwinded advection equation through a Taylor-Galerkin scheme; this provides a mechanism for dissipating enstrophy at the gridscale whilst retaining optimal order consistency. We also use upwind discontinuous Galerkin schemes for the transport of layer depth. These transport schemes are incorporated into a semi-implicit formulation that is facilitated by a hybridisation method for solving the resulting mixed Helmholtz equation. We illustrate our discretisation with some standard rotating sphere test problems.
Finite element exterior calculus (FEEC) has been developed over the past decade as a framework for constructing and analyzing stable and accurate numerical methods for partial differential equations by employing differential complexes. The recent work of Arnold, Falk and Winther cite{ArFaWi2010} includes a well-developed theory of finite element methods for Hodge Laplace problems, including a priori error estimates. In this work we focus on developing a posteriori error estimates in which the computational error is bounded by some computable functional of the discrete solution and problem data. More precisely, we prove a posteriori error estimates of residual type for Arnold-Falk-Winther mixed finite element methods for Hodge-de Rham Laplace problems. While a number of previous works consider a posteriori error estimation for Maxwells equations and mixed formulations of the scalar Laplacian, the approach we take is distinguished by unified treatment of the various Hodge Laplace problems arising in the de Rham complex, consistent use of the language and analytical framework of differential forms, and the development of a posteriori error estimates for harmonic forms and the effects of their approximation on the resulting numerical method for the Hodge Laplacian.
For the Hodge--Laplace equation in finite element exterior calculus, we introduce several families of discontinuous Galerkin methods in the extended Galerkin framework. For contractible domains, this framework utilizes seven fields and provides a unifying inf-sup analysis with respect to all discretization and penalty parameters. It is shown that the proposed methods can be hybridized as a reduced two-field formulation.
We introduce a mixed discontinuous/continuous finite element pair for ocean modelling, with continuous quadratic pressure/layer depth and discontinuous velocity. We investigate the finite element pair applied to the linear shallow-water equations on an f-plane. The element pair has the property that all geostrophically balanced states which strongly satisfy the boundary conditions have discrete divergence equal to exactly zero and hence are exactly steady states of the discretised equations. This means that the finite element pair has excellent geostrophic balance properties. We illustrate these properties using numerical tests and provide convergence calculations which show that the discretisation has quadratic errors, indicating that the element pair is stable.
We consider the Cacuhy problem for a viscous compressible rotating shallow water system with a third-order surface-tension term involved, derived recently in the modelling of motions for shallow water with free surface in a rotating sub-domain. The global existence of the solution in the space of Besov type is shown for initial data close to a constant equilibrium state away from the vacuum. Unlike the previous analysis about the compressible fluid model without coriolis forces, the rotating effect causes a coupling between two parts of Hodges decomposition of the velocity vector field, additional regularity is required in order to carry out the Friedrichs regularization and compactness arguments.