Vortex erosion and amalgamation in a new model of large scale flow on the sphere (Q1815898)

The pseudo-spectral methodology that is typically employed to simulate fluid flow in spherical geometry exhibits, among other limitations, a severe degradation of performance at high resolution. Finite element models based upon the application of multigrid methods may be designed so as to avoid this defect while also allowing for greater local control over the computational mesh. We describe herein the details of the mathematical methods that are required to implement such a computational structure and apply these methods to design a model based upon the two-dimensional spherical barotropic vorticity equation.