Analysis of the singular vectors of the full-physics Florida State University Global Spectral Model

Abstract

Analysis of singular vectors (SVs) is performed on the Florida State University Global Spectral Model, which includes linearized full physics of the atmosphere. It is demonstrated that the physical processes, especially precipitation, fundamentally affect the leading SVs. When the SVs are coupled with the precipitation geographically, their growth rates increase substantially and their structures change significantly. The physical processes however have little impact on growth rates or structures of the SVs that are geographically independent of precipitation. Furthermore, it is shown that spatial filtering along with the projection operator that projects the flow winds to the rotational wind (designed as a simple initialization process) improves the structural features of SVs and is found to mitigate spurious modes. Copyright © Blackwell Munksgaard, 2005.