A Constrained Spectral Approximation of Subgrid-Scale Orography on Unstructured Grids

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Chew, Ray, Dolaptchiev, Stamen, Wedel, Maja-Sophie, Achatz, Ulrich
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Chew, Ray
Dolaptchiev, Stamen
Wedel, Maja-Sophie
Achatz, Ulrich
author_facet Chew, Ray
Dolaptchiev, Stamen
Wedel, Maja-Sophie
Achatz, Ulrich
contents The representation of subgrid-scale orography is a challenge in the physical parameterization of orographic gravity-wave sources in weather forecasting. A significant hurdle is encoding as much physical information with as simple a representation as possible. Other issues include scale awareness, i.e., the orographic representation has to change according to the grid cell size and usability on unstructured geodesic grids with non-quadrilateral grid cells. This work introduces a novel spectral analysis method approximating a scale-aware spectrum of subgrid-scale orography on unstructured geodesic grids. The dimension of the physical orographic data is reduced by more than two orders of magnitude in its spectral representation. Simultaneously, the power of the approximated spectrum is close to the physical value. The method is based on well-known least-squares spectral analyses. However, it is robust to the choice of the free parameters, and tuning the algorithm is generally unnecessary. Numerical experiments involving an idealized setup show that this novel spectral analysis performs significantly better than a straightforward least-squares spectral analysis in representing the physical energy of a spectrum. Studies involving real-world topographic data are conducted, and reasonable error scores within $\pm 10\%$ error relative to the maximum physical quantity of interest are achieved across different grid sizes and background wind speeds. The deterministic behavior of the method is investigated along with its principal capabilities and potential biases, and it is shown that the error scores can be iteratively improved if an optimization target is known. Discussions on the method's limitations and broader applicability conclude this work.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_19184
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Constrained Spectral Approximation of Subgrid-Scale Orography on Unstructured Grids
Chew, Ray
Dolaptchiev, Stamen
Wedel, Maja-Sophie
Achatz, Ulrich
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
The representation of subgrid-scale orography is a challenge in the physical parameterization of orographic gravity-wave sources in weather forecasting. A significant hurdle is encoding as much physical information with as simple a representation as possible. Other issues include scale awareness, i.e., the orographic representation has to change according to the grid cell size and usability on unstructured geodesic grids with non-quadrilateral grid cells. This work introduces a novel spectral analysis method approximating a scale-aware spectrum of subgrid-scale orography on unstructured geodesic grids. The dimension of the physical orographic data is reduced by more than two orders of magnitude in its spectral representation. Simultaneously, the power of the approximated spectrum is close to the physical value. The method is based on well-known least-squares spectral analyses. However, it is robust to the choice of the free parameters, and tuning the algorithm is generally unnecessary. Numerical experiments involving an idealized setup show that this novel spectral analysis performs significantly better than a straightforward least-squares spectral analysis in representing the physical energy of a spectrum. Studies involving real-world topographic data are conducted, and reasonable error scores within $\pm 10\%$ error relative to the maximum physical quantity of interest are achieved across different grid sizes and background wind speeds. The deterministic behavior of the method is investigated along with its principal capabilities and potential biases, and it is shown that the error scores can be iteratively improved if an optimization target is known. Discussions on the method's limitations and broader applicability conclude this work.
title A Constrained Spectral Approximation of Subgrid-Scale Orography on Unstructured Grids
topic Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.19184