A compatible finite element discretisation for the nonhydrostatic vertical slice equations

We present a compatible finite element discretisation for the vertical slice compressible Euler equations, at next-to-lowest order (i.e., the pressure space is bilinear discontinuous functions). The equations are numerically integrated in time using a fully implicit timestepping scheme which is solved using monolithic GMRES preconditioned by a linesmoother. The linesmoother only involves local operations and is thus suitable for domain decomposition in parallel. It allows for arbitrarily large timesteps but with iteration counts scaling linearly with Courant number in the limit of large Courant number. This solver approach is implemented using Firedrake, and the additive Schwarz preconditioner framework of PETSc. We demonstrate the robustness of the scheme using a standard set of testcases that may be compared with other approaches.Comment: Response to reviewers. Thanks to Golo Wimmer for pointing out the wrong factor of h in the interior penalty for diffusion - this was also wrong in the codes and we reran the dense bubble testcase

Compatible finite element methods for geophysical fluid dynamics

This article surveys research on the application of compatible finite element methods to large scale atmosphere and ocean simulation. Compatible finite element methods extend Arakawa's C-grid finite difference scheme to the finite element world. They are constructed from a discrete de Rham complex, which is a sequence of finite element spaces which are linked by the operators of differential calculus. The use of discrete de Rham complexes to solve partial differential equations is well established, but in this article we focus on the specifics of dynamical cores for simulating weather, oceans and climate. The most important consequence of the discrete de Rham complex is the Hodge-Helmholtz decomposition, which has been used to exclude the possibility of several types of spurious oscillations from linear equations of geophysical flow. This means that compatible finite element spaces provide a useful framework for building dynamical cores. In this article we introduce the main concepts of compatible finite element spaces, and discuss their wave propagation properties. We survey some methods for discretising the transport terms that arise in dynamical core equation systems, and provide some example discretisations, briefly discussing their iterative solution. Then we focus on the recent use of compatible finite element spaces in designing structure preserving methods, surveying variational discretisations, Poisson bracket discretisations, and consistent vorticity transport.Comment: correction of some typo

Compatible finite element spaces for geophysical fluid dynamics

Compatible finite elements provide a framework for preserving important structures in equations of geophysical uid dynamics, and are becoming important in their use for building atmosphere and ocean models. We survey the application of compatible finite element spaces to geophysical uid dynamics, including the application to the nonlinear rotating shallow water equations, and the three-dimensional compressible Euler equations. We summarise analytic results about dispersion relations and conservation properties, and present new results on approximation properties in three dimensions on the sphere, and on hydrostatic balance properties

Conservation and stability in a discontinuous Galerkin method for the vector invariant spherical shallow water equations

We develop a novel and efficient discontinuous Galerkin spectral element method (DG-SEM) for the spherical rotating shallow water equations in vector invariant form. We prove that the DG-SEM is energy stable, and discretely conserves mass, vorticity, and linear geostrophic balance on general curvlinear meshes. These theoretical results are possible due to our novel entropy stable numerical DG fluxes for the shallow water equations in vector invariant form. We experimentally verify these results on a cubed sphere mesh. Additionally, we show that our method is robust, that is can be run stably without any dissipation. The entropy stable fluxes are sufficient to control the grid scale noise generated by geostrophic turbulence without the need for artificial stabilisation

Structure Preserving Model Order Reduction of Shallow Water Equations

In this paper, we present two different approaches for constructing reduced-order models (ROMs) for the two-dimensional shallow water equation (SWE). The first one is based on the noncanonical Hamiltonian/Poisson form of the SWE. After integration in time by the fully implicit average vector field method, ROMs are constructed with proper orthogonal decomposition/discrete empirical interpolation method (POD/DEIM) that preserves the Hamiltonian structure. In the second approach, the SWE as a partial differential equation with quadratic nonlinearity is integrated in time by the linearly implicit Kahan's method and ROMs are constructed with the tensorial POD that preserves the linear-quadratic structure of the SWE. We show that in both approaches, the invariants of the SWE such as the energy, enstrophy, mass, and circulation are preserved over a long period of time, leading to stable solutions. We conclude by demonstrating the accuracy and the computational efficiency of the reduced solutions by a numerical test problem

Compatible finite element spaces for geophysical fluid dynamics

This is the final version. Available from Oxford University Press via the DOI in this record.Compatible finite elements provide a framework for preserving important structures in equations of geophysical fluid dynamics and are becoming important in their use for building atmosphere and ocean models. We survey the application of compatible finite element spaces to geophysical fluid dynamics, including the application to the non-linear rotating shallow water equations, and the three-dimensional compressible Euler equations. We summarize analytic results about dispersion relations and conservation properties and present new results on approximation properties in three dimensions on the sphere and on hydrostatic balance properties

A compatible finite element discretisation for the nonhydrostatic vertical slice equations

We present a compatible finite element discretisation for the vertical slice compressible Euler equations, at next-to-lowest order (i.e., the pressure space is bilinear discontinuous functions). The equations are numerically integrated in time using a fully implicit timestepping scheme which is solved using monolithic GMRES preconditioned by a linesmoother. The linesmoother only involves local operations and is thus suitable for domain decomposition in parallel. It allows for arbitrarily large timesteps but with iteration counts scaling linearly with Courant number in the limit of large Courant number. This solver approach is implemented using Firedrake, and the additive Schwarz preconditioner framework of PETSc. We demonstrate the robustness of the scheme using a standard set of testcases that may be compared with other approaches