Large-Eddy Simulation of Turbulent Barotropic Flows in Spectral Space on a Sphere

• Published in: Journal of the atmospheric sciences 2015-05, Vol.72 (5), p.1727-1742
• Main Authors: Azadani, L N, Staples, A E
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Atmospheric circulation; Atmospherics; Discretization; Experiments; Filtering; Filtration; Low pass filters; Marine; Mathematical models; Meteorology; Simulation; Spectra; Turbulence
• ISSN: 0022-4928; 1520-0469
• DOI: 10.1175/JAS-D-14-0183.1

Numerical simulations of atmospheric circulation models are limited by their finite spatial resolution, so large-eddy simulation (LES) is a preferred approach to study these models. In LES, a low-pass filter is applied to the flow field to separate the large- and small-scale motions. In implicitly filtered LES, the computational mesh and discretization schemes are considered to be the low-pass filter, while in the explicitly filtered LES approach, the filtering procedure is separated from the grid and discretization operators and allows for better control of the numerical errors. The aim of this paper is to study and compare implicitly filtered and explicitly filtered LES of atmospheric circulation models in spectral space. To achieve this goal, the results of implicitly filtered and explicitly filtered LES of a barotropic atmosphere circulation model on a sphere in spectral space are presented and compared with the results obtained from direct numerical simulation (DNS). Different numerical experiments are performed to investigate the efficiency of explicit filtering over implicit filtering under different dissipation terms and rotation rates. The study shows that explicit filtering increases the accuracy of the computations and improves the results, particularly where the location of coherent structures is concerned, a topic of particular importance in LES of atmospheric flows for climate and weather applications.