Hydrostatic adjustment in nonhydrostatic, compressible mesoscale models

Abstract

The ability of various numerical techniques used in compressible, nonhydrostatic models to handle hydrostatic adjustment is intercompared. The exact solution of a linearized model of an isothermal, compressible, nonrotating atmosphere is compared against those from finite-differenced versions of the same model. For the semi-implicit scheme, the scheme traps acoustic waves near the point of excitation but has little effect on gravity waves. The time-splitting scheme captures hydrostatic adjustment well.