In this paper we consider the numerical difficulties that arise when horizontal advection is coupled with chemistry on a sphere, using operator splitting. From a numerical point of view, these two processes are the most difficult parts of an atmospheric model for global studies. The advection process is solved on a uniform grid and on a so-called reduced grid, where less cells are used near the poles than at the equator. The chemical kinetics is solved with Twostep, a solver based on the two-step backward differentiation formula, with constant and variable time steps. A reproducible test to measure the accuracy and the mass conservation property is introduced. To reduce the splitting error we integrate the chemistry along characteristics.

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CWI
Department of Numerical Mathematics [NM]

Spee, E. (1995). Coupling advection and chemical kinetics in a global atmospheric test model. Department of Numerical Mathematics [NM]. CWI.