Resolution effects and enslaved finite-difference schemes for a double gyre, shallow-water model (Q1390001)

We study numerical solutions of the reduced-gravity shallow-water equation on a beta plane, subjected to a sinusoidally varying wind forcing leading to the formation of a double gyre circulation. We present a method applicable to any finite-difference scheme, which effectively increasees the spatial resolution of the given algorithm without changing its temporal stability or memory requirements. This enslaving method makes use of properties of the governing equations in the absence of time derivatives to reduce the overall truncation error. By examining statistical measures of stochastic solutions at resolutions near the Rossby radius, we show that the enslaved schemes are capable of reproducing statistics of standard scheme computed at twice the resolution.