Trajectory Calculations for Spherical Geodesic Grids in Cartesian Space

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1 See discussions, stats, author profiles for this publication at: Trajectory Calculations for Spherical Geodesic Grids in Cartesian Space ARTICLE in MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW JULY 1999 Impact Factor:.6 DOI: / (1999)17<1651:TCFSGG>.0.CO; CITATIONS 0 DOWNLOADS 16 VIEWS 41 1 AUTHOR: Francis X Giraldo Naval Postgraduate School 8 PUBLICATIONS 1,16 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Available from: Francis X Giraldo Retrieved on: 1 August 015

2 Report Documentation Page Form Approved OMB No Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering maintaining the data needed, completing reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations Reports, 115 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 104, Arlington VA Respondents should be aware that notwithsting any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number. 1. REPORT DATE JUL REPORT TYPE. DATES COVERED to TITLE AND SUBTITLE Trajectory Calculations for Spherical Geodesic Grids in Cartesian Space 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER 5b. GRANT NUMBER 5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER 6. AUTHOR(S) 5d. PROJECT NUMBER 5e. TASK NUMBER 5f. WORK UNIT NUMBER 7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) Naval Research Laboratory,7 Grace Hopper Ave,Monterey,CA, PERFORMING ORGANIZATION REPORT NUMBER 9. SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 10. SPONSOR/MONITOR S ACRONYM(S) 1. DISTRIBUTION/AVAILABILITY STATEMENT Approved for public release; distribution unlimited 1. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES 11. SPONSOR/MONITOR S REPORT NUMBER(S) 14. ABSTRACT This paper shows how to obtain accurate efficient trajectory calculations for spherical geodesic grids in Cartesian space. Determination of the departure points is essential to characteristic-based methods that trace the value of a function to the foot of the characteristics then either integrate or interpolate at this location. In this paper, the departure points are all computed in relation to the spherical geodesic grids that are composed of a disjoint set of unstructured equilateral triangles. Interpolating noninterpolating trajectory calculation approaches are both illustrated the accuracy of both methods are compared. The noninterpolating method of McGregor results in the most accurate trajectories. The challenge in using McGregor???s method on unstructured triangular grids lies in the computation of the derivatives required in the high-order terms of the Taylor series expansion. This paper extends McGregor???s method to unstructured triangular grids by describing an accurate efficient method for constructing the derivatives in an element by element approach typical of finite element methods. An order of accuracy analysis reveals that these numerical derivatives are second-order accurate. 15. SUBJECT TERMS 16. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF: 17. LIMITATION OF ABSTRACT a. REPORT unclassified b. ABSTRACT unclassified c. THIS PAGE unclassified Same as Report (SAR) 18. NUMBER OF PAGES 1 19a. NAME OF RESPONSIBLE PERSON Stard Form 98 (Rev. 8-98) Prescribed by ANSI Std Z9-18

3 JULY 1999 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE 1651 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE Trajectory Calculations for Spherical Geodesic Grids in Cartesian Space FRANCIS X. GIRALDO Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, California 9 April July 1998 ABSTRACT This paper shows how to obtain accurate efficient trajectory calculations for spherical geodesic grids in Cartesian space. Determination of the departure points is essential to characteristic-based methods that trace the value of a function to the foot of the characteristics then either integrate or interpolate at this location. In this paper, the departure points are all computed in relation to the spherical geodesic grids that are composed of a disjoint set of unstructured equilateral triangles. Interpolating noninterpolating trajectory calculation approaches are both illustrated the accuracy of both methods are compared. The noninterpolating method of McGregor results in the most accurate trajectories. The challenge in using McGregor s method on unstructured triangular grids lies in the computation of the derivatives required in the high-order terms of the Taylor series expansion. This paper extends McGregor s method to unstructured triangular grids by describing an accurate efficient method for constructing the derivatives in an element by element approach typical of finite element methods. An order of accuracy analysis reveals that these numerical derivatives are second-order accurate. 1. Introduction The solution of partial differential equations on the sphere is of prime importance in meteorology oceanography. The proper coordinate system would appear to be the spherical coordinates but this system poses some challenging problems at the poles not only for Eulerian formulations of the equations but for Lagrangian formulations as well. The pole problem can be overcome in a variety of ways, such as the use of Cartesian rather than spherical coordinates to write the differential equations. This approach was used in Giraldo (1997) for the advection equation. This approach may also be used for the shallow water equations by using the Lagrange multiplier formulation of Côté (1988). Côté writes the equations in Cartesian coordinates but then includes an extra forcing term obtained by using Lagrange multipliers. This forcing term constrains the motion of all fluid particles to remain on the sphere. We are very much interested in this formulation as we are currently developing a weak Lagrange Galerkin shallow water model on the sphere using Cartesian coordinates [see Giraldo (1997) for details of the weak Lagrange Galerkin method]. For this reason, this paper only deals with the determination of the departure points in Cartesian space. Corresponding author address: Francis X. Giraldo, Naval Research Laboratory, 7 Grace Hopper Ave., Monterey, CA giraldo@nrlmry.navy.mil McGregor (199) introduced an economical departure point calculation procedure that does not involve interpolation. His scheme is very efficient accurate but the implementation of the method was only illustrated for rectangular grids. This paper shows the implementation of McGregor s approach on unstructured triangular grids such as those composing the spherical geodesic grids.. Governing equation Let us consider a simple equation for our study such that we have analytic values for the solution the trajectories. In spherical coordinates the advection equation for the variable is [ ] [ 1 ũ 1 ] a cos a a ũ t a cos a tan 0, (1) a is the radius of the sphere, (ũ, ) are the zonal meridional velocity components, (, ) are the longitudinal latitudinal coordinates. The first bracketed term represents the operator u the second term represents u. However, instead of using this form, let us look at the Cartesian form

4 165 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW VOLUME 17 [ ] [ ] u w u w t x y z x y z 0 () used in Giraldo (1997). This equation can now be written in the following compact form: (u) 0, () t which is the conservation form of the advection equation is some conservation variable, u is the velocity vector. In Giraldo (1997), this equation was solved using the weak Lagrange Galerkin method. Beginning with the method of weighted residuals with weight (i.e., basis) function [ ] (u) d 0, t on domain integrating by parts such that we get t t t (u) (u) (u), [ ] [ ] (u) u d 0. t t The basis functions are chosen such that the second term in brackets disappears. In other words, the basis functions are chosen such that they are constant along the characteristics. This results in the simplified system (u) d 0 (4) t along with u 0 t dx u(x, t), dt d u dt t denotes the total (or Lagrangian) derivative. By virtue of the Reynolds transport theorem, (4) now becomes d dt d 0, which, after integrating along the characteristics, gives A A (x, t t)(x, t t) d A A D D D D (x, t)(x, t) d, (5) A D denote arrival departure points. [For further details on this method, refer to Giraldo (1997).] However, this is clearly not the only method of solving this equation using characteristic-based methods. In the case of a divergence-free flow, the Lagrangian form of () is d 0 dt (6) dx u(x, t). dt (7) Discretizing this equation by the semi-lagrangian method then applying the finite element method, yields the following relation: A A which is equivalent to (x, t t)(x, t t) d A A D A A A (x, t)(x, t t) d, (8) (x A, t t) (x D, t), which is the typical semi-lagrangian formulation for this equation regardless of which spatial discretization method we select. Note that the resulting equations for both methods are equivalent if only if the flow is divergence free. The main difference between the two approaches is that (5) depends on integration while (8) on interpolation. The integration can be carried out exactly or by Gaussian quadrature. The interpolations, on the other h, are a bit more complex on unstructured grids perhaps the best approach is to use the kriging method described in Le Roux et al. (1997), although Lagrange interpolation on the triangles could certainly be used. However, the accuracy of both methods relies mainly on how accurate the trajectories are calculated; namely, how best to solve (7). The solution of this equation on unstructured triangular grids is the scope of this paper.. Test case Numerical experiments are performed on the advection equation on the sphere, which is defined by (1). The initial condition is given as in Williamson et al. (199) by the cosine wave

5 JULY 1999 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE 165 h 1, h r 1 cos if r R R 0 if r R, (x, 0) r a arccos[sin sin cos cos cos( )], c c c a a R, c, c 0, 1 days the velocity field is assumed to be constant given by ũ (cos cos sin cos sin) sin sin, determines the axis of rotation of the flow with respect to the poles. As an example 0 yields flow along the equator. The results are reported for one revolution of the initial wave that takes 1 days to complete one full revolution about the sphere. By using the mapping from spherical to Cartesian space x a cos cos y a cos sin z a sin, (9) y arctan x z arcsin, (10) a we can write the initial conditions in terms of Cartesian coordinates. This results in the following velocity field: u ũsin sin cos ũcos sin sin w cos, along with the following analytic solution: exact (x, t) (x tu, 0), which is the solid body rotation of the cosine wave about the axis defined by. Note that the mapping from spherical to Cartesian space is only done once at the beginning in order to define the problem. From then on, the problem is solved in Cartesian space. The L error norm is defined as 1/ [(x, t) (x, t)] d exact exact L, (11) [ (x, t)] d represents the element triangles, in a finite element sense. In addition to the L norm, two more measures are used, namely, the first second moments of the conservation variable, which are defined as (x, t) d M1 (1) (x, t) d exact (x, t) d M. (1) (x, t) d exact These values measure the conservation properties dissipation of the numerical method, respectively. 4. Trajectory calculations The exact solution to () can be written as exact (x, t t) (x tu, t). By applying a rotation transformation as in McDonald Bates (1989), we get the arrival points in the rotated space arctan[cos sin( ), A A A cos cos( ) cos sin sin ] A A A A arcsin[sina cos cosa cos(a ) sin ], which now consist of motion about the equator, only. Note that since all the points are stored in Cartesian space we must use (10) in order to get the arrival points in terms of spherical coordinates. The departure points in the rotated space are D A t a D, A 0. Using the inverse transformation, we get arctan[cos sin, D D D cos cos cos sin sin ] D D D D arcsin[cos D cosd sin sin D cos ], (14) which are the departure points in the original (unrotated) spherical space. The departure points in Cartesian space can now be obtained using the mapping (9). Equation (14) gives us the exact trajectories so we must devise a scheme that best approximates this solution.

6 1654 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW VOLUME 17 a. Ritchie s method There are many ways of integrating (7) but the most common form in plane space has been the midpoint rule, namely t t xm xa u x M, t, (15) which defines a recursive scheme because x M is given implicitly in the relation. In addition, this scheme also requires interpolation because x M will generally not fall on a grid point. Usually, between three five iteration loops [see Ritchie (1987)] are required to converge to the solution at which point, the departure point is calculated by t xd xa tu x M, t. However, we have said nothing about the order of the interpolations but obviously the higher the order of the interpolant, the better the trajectory accuracy, but the greater the computer time as well. The midpoint rule yields second-order accuracy has been used quite successfully in D planar space. On the sphere, the midpoint rule has to be modified such that the new departure points computed by (15) remain on the surface of the sphere. In other words, after each iteration we must apply the projection a xd x D, x D a is the radius of the sphere. In fact, Ritchie s method simplifies to the midpoint rule on the surface of a sphere. In his method, we start with a Taylor series expansion about the midpoint (t t/) up to second order to get t t x t x(t t) x t t O(t). t Now, let x A x(t t) x M x(t t/) be the arrival midpoints, respectively. After rearranging, we get t xm xa u M, which is exactly equal to (15), u M u(x M, t t/). However, we need to add a correction factor b in order to constrain the new iterated point to remain on the sphere. Thus, we require t xm b xa u M (16) such that x M a. Taking the magnitude of (16) rearranging we get a b [, 1/ t a tx A um u M um ] which is similar to the result in Ritchie (1987) but for a two-time-level scheme. From Ritchie (1987), we get the departure points from the relation x M xa x x x, D M A a which can be simplified by using the definition of a dot product x M x A x M x A cos to xd xa xm. cos If we take the midpoint to be the average between the arrival departure points then project it on to the sphere, we arrive at the relation xd xa xm b. By once again enforcing that the point remains on the sphere, we get [ ] 1/ b 1 cos by using the trigonometric identity cos cos 1 we now get 1 b, cos which recovers Ritchie s result. Thus, Ritchie s method is exactly the midpoint integration rule with a modification that projects the iterated point onto the surface of the sphere. b. McGregor s method Another possibility for integrating (7) is the noniterative scheme of McGregor. From McGregor (199), we write a Taylor series expansion for the departure point x(t) about the arrival point x(t t) along the characteristics as N n n (t) d x x(t) x(t t) (t t) n n! dt n1 N1 O(t, x), d u û dt t

7 JULY 1999 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE 1655 û ux(t t), t t [see McGregor (199)]. Therefore, the only thing left to do is to obtain the derivatives in the gradient operator. If we are using rectangular grids then we can write the derivatives in the stard centered finite difference form (x x, y, z) (x x, y, z) (x, y, z) x x (x, y y, z) (x, y y, z) (x, y, z) y y (x, y, z z) (x, y, z z) (x, y, z), z z yielding a second-order accurate derivative in space. Higher derivatives are also readily available reapplying this relation. But what if the grid is unstructured? In this case, we must compute the derivatives in a finite element sense. But first, let us introduce the linear triangular finite element basis functions on the sphere. 5. Basis functions Linear natural coordinates on a triangle in D Cartesian space can be written as ax i by i cz i i(x, y, z), (17) deter ai yz j k yz, k j bi xz k j xz, j k ci xy j k xy, k j x1 x x deter y1 y y, z1 z z i, j, k are cyclical, that is, if i 1, then j, k, so on. By using the definition of the natural coordinates (17) the fact that the three nodes on each triangle define a plane N (x x 1 ) 0, N is the outward pointing normal to the triangle defined by N (x x 1) (x x 1) î ĵ kˆ x x1 y y1 z z 1, (18) x x y y z z it can be shown that the natural coordinates satisfy the condition 1 (x, y, z) (x, y, z) (x, y, z) 1 (see the appendix for the proofs derivations concerning these basis functions). This is a necessary condition for a consistent monotonic interpolation. These natural coordinates can now be used as the finite element basis functions. Integration by parts reveals that any integral of the following form involving these basis functions can be obtained in closed form by the relation 1 deter!!! d. (19) ( )! This relation is almost identical to the closed form solution for linear triangles on the plane given by Silvester (1969). For the special case that the three-dimensional domain lies entirely on a plane, both integration rules are equivalent. Using these basis functions, we can now construct the derivatives at the grid points in a finite element sense. Derivatives We can construct the derivatives in the following manner: let e (x, y, z) j(x, y, z) j (0) j1 denote the value of e within the element, j the basis functions, j the value of the conservation variable at the vertices (grid points) of the element in question. From (0) we get the derivatives within the element to be e (x, y, z) x e (x, y, z) y j1 j1 j1 j (x, y, z)j x j (x, y, z)j y e j (x, y, z) (x, y, z) j, (1) z z j aj (x, y, z) x deter j bj (x, y, z) y deter j cj (x, y, z), z deter from (17). However, we need the derivatives on the grid points not within the elements. If we knew these derivatives, then we could write them as

8 1656 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW VOLUME 17 j j1 j j1 j j1 e j (x, y, z) (x, y, z) x x e j (x, y, z) (x, y, z) y y e j (x, y, z) (x, y, z). () z z Equating these relations with (1) employing the finite element method, we can construct a set of integral equations, namely i i i i i i j j j d dj x x j j j d dj y y j j j d d j, () z z for i, j 1,..., which is symmetric, depending on the node number ordering, tightly bed. Using Eqs. (17) (19), Eq. () results in the following elemental matrix equations: 1 x x deter x a a a 1 1 deter a 1 1 a a, (4) 4 deter a a a 1 1 with similar relations for the y z terms. The global system composed of these elemental matrix equations requires the inversion of a sparse but tightly bed matrix. This potential bottleneck can be bypassed by diagonalizing the elemental equations yielding 1 x a a a x 4 deter a11 a a a a a, x which can be solved explicitly for the derivatives. The second derivatives within the element can now be written as e j (x, y, z) j(x, y, z) j1 x e j (x, y, z) j(x, y, z) j1 y e j j j1 z x y (x, y, z) (x, y, z), z that is, assuming we knew the second derivatives at the grid points. Taking the derivatives of () we get j1 j1 j j (x, y, z) (x, y, z) x x x e e j j (x, y, z) (x, y, z) y y y e j j (x, y, z) (x, y, z), z z z j1 the derivatives of j are the first derivatives at the grid points obtained from (4). Equating these two sets of relations once again employing the finite element method, we obtain the equations i i i j j j i x x x j j j i y y y j j j i z z z d d j d d j d d, (5) j which simplify to the following element matrix relations 1 x 1 1 deter x 1 1 x 1 a1 a a x x x deter 1 a1 a a 4 deter x x x, (6) 1 a1 a a x x x once again, the relations for the y z terms are immediately obvious. The diagonalized version yields

9 JULY 1999 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE 1657 TABLE 1. Derivative accuracy using centered finite differences for the cosine function in planar space on the crisscross grid. Grid points f x L f y L f x L f y L f xy L FIG. 1. The element-wise contribution of the surrounding elements to the grid points. 1 1 x a1 a a x x x a1 a a, x 4 deter x x x a a a 1 x x x x which, again, does not require the inversion of a large global matrix. Higher-order derivatives can be obtained by continuing this process. Note that Eqs. (4) (6) may appear to imply that 1 /x /x /x similarly for all derivatives. However, these are elemental equations the global equations are obtained by summing the contribution of all the triangular elements surrounding each node point. Because the basis functions are linear, then the derivatives within the element will be constants so that Eqs. (4) (6) say that the contribution of each triangular element to its three vertices is a constant value. In Fig. 1 we can see that grid point 5 will get contributions from elements 1 6, while grid point 6 will get contributions from elements As a result, all of the gridpoint derivatives will have unique values. 6. Derivative accuracy Before we study the accuracy of the trajectory calculations using the results from the previous two sections it is wise to first know the accuracy of the derivatives themselves. Let us apply the D linear basis functions on a plane. We perform these numerical experiments on the plane using a structured grid in order to compare our finite element derivatives with the stard centered finite differences. On this plane, let z c c is some constant. Therefore our basis functions simplify as follows: ax i by i ci i, deter ai yj y k, bi xk x j, ci xy j k xy, k j x1 x x deter y1 y y, z c has been factored out from all of the relations. Recall that these functions have the exact integration rules obtained by deter!!! 1 d, ( )! which now yields the usual linear triangular finite element basis functions on the plane as in Silvester (1969). To test the accuracy of the numerical derivatives, we shall use the cosine function h r 1 cos if r R R 0 if r R f (x) with r (x x c) (y y c), (x c, y c) (0, 0), 1 [x, y] [1, 1], R. By defining a normalized L norm such as f x L [ ] [ ] 1/ f f (x) (x) d x x exact, f (x) d x exact for all of the derivatives, we can now measure the accuracy of our numerical derivatives. Tables 1,, list the first second derivative results for various grid sizes using centered finite differences, finite elements with a full matrix, finite elements with a diagonalized matrix, respectively. An example of the structure of the grids used is illustrated in Fig. for the point case. The tabulated results show that the finite element derivatives are superior to the finite differences but this approach requires the inversion of a

10 1658 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW VOLUME 17 TABLE. Derivative accuracy using finite elements with a full matrix for the cosine function in planar space on the crisscross grid. Grid points f x L f y L f x L f y L f xy L matrix. For this reason, we have also included the diagonalized version, which does not require this inversion. The results show that the diagonalized version is inferior to the full matrix version but if we are concerned with efficiency, then this faster version is more appropriate. Let us now look at the formal order of accuracy analysis of the finite element type numerical derivatives. Order of accuracy analysis The structured crisscross grid illustrated in Fig. was selected for our study because it has the least amount of biasing. This is important because the spherical geodesic grid has little or no biasing on the sphere. The crisscross grid has two types of gridpoint contributions from the surrounding elements that are illustrated in Figs. 4. The first type of contribution (illustrated in Fig. ) has derivatives given by f i,j ( fi1,j f i1,j) O(x ) x x f i,j ( fi,j fi,j f i,j) O(x ) x 4x f i,j ( fi1,j1 fi1,j1 fi1,j1 f i1,j1) xy 4xy O(x, y ), FIG.. The point crisscross grid used for the derivative analysis. the derivatives in y are immediately obvious. The orders O given in these relations denote the order of accuracy of the derivatives. These derivatives are all second-order accurate in both x y. In fact, they yield the exact same derivative formulas obtained with centered finite differencing. The second type of contribution (Fig. 4) has the derivatives f i,j ( fi1,j1 f i1,j1) (fi1,j f i1,j) x 8x 8x ( fi1,j1 f i1,j1) O(x, y ), 8x TABLE. Derivative accuracy using finite elements with a diagonalized matrix for the cosine function in planar space on the crisscross grid. Grid points f x L f y L f x L f y L f xy L FIG.. The first type of element contribution to the grid points of the crisscross grid.

11 JULY 1999 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE 1659 FIG. 4. The second type of element contribution to the grid points of the crisscross grid. f i,j ( fi,j fi,j f i,j) x 64x 4( f f f ) i,j1 i,j1 i,j1 64x 6( f f f ) i,j i,j i,j 64x 4( f f f ) i,j1 i,j1 i,j1 64x ( fi,j fi,j f i,j) O(x, y ), 64x f i,j ( fi,j fi,j fi,j f i,j) xy 64xy ( fi,j1 fi,j1 fi,j1 f i,j1) 64xy ( fi1,j fi1,j fi1,j f i1,j) 64xy 4( fi1,j1 fi1,j1 fi1,j1 f i1,j1) 64xy O(x, y ), which are all second order. Thus even with the diagonalized version of the derivatives, we are guaranteed an order of accuracy similar to centered finite differences, regardless of the structure of the grid. This order of accuracy analysis is given only to compare the finite element derivatives to the finite difference derivatives. FIG. 5. The differencing stencil for the finite element derivatives on the spherical geodesic grid. However, the real interest is in determining the finite element derivatives on the hexagonal-type stencils that arise in the spherical geodesic grids is illustrated in Fig. 5. In this case, we arrive at the following derivatives: f i,j ( fi(1/),j1 f i(1/),j1) (fi1,j f i1,j) x 6x 6x ( fi(1/),j1 f i(1/),j1) O(x, y ), 6x f i,j ( fi(1/),j1 f i(1/),j1) (fi(1/),j1 f i(1/),j1) y 4y 4y O(x, y ), f i,j ( fi1,j fi,j f i1,j) x 6x 4( fi(/),j1 fi(1/),j1 fi(1/),j1 f i(/),j1) 6x (fi,j fi1,j 6fi,j fi1,j f i,j) 6x 4( fi(/),j1 fi(1/),j1 fi(1/),j1 f i(/),j1) 6x ( fi1,j fi,j f i1,j) O(x, y ), 6x f i,j ( fi1,j fi1,j f i1,j) y 16y ( fi,j fi,j f i,j) 16y ( fi1,j fi1,j f i1,j) O(x, y ), 16y

12 1660 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW VOLUME 17 TABLE 4. Trajectory accuracy for the exact trajectories, midpoint rule, McGregor s noninterpolating scheme for values of N 1,..., 4 with 1.1 on the spherical geodesic grid with 64 points after one revolution for 0. TABLE 5. Trajectory accuracy for the exact trajectories, midpoint rule, McGregor s noninterpolating scheme for values of N 1,..., 4 with.7 on the spherical geodesic grid with 56 points after one revolution for 0. Trajectory method Exact Midpoint rule N 1 N N N 4 x D L L M 1 M Trajectory method Exact Midpoint rule N 1 N N N 4 x D L L M 1 M f i,j ( fi1,j fi1,j fi1,j f i1,j) xy 4xy ( fi(/),j1 fi(/),j1 fi(/),j1 f i(/),j1) 4xy ( fi(1/),j1 fi(1/),j1 fi(1/),j1 f i(1/),j1) 4xy O(x, y ), which are also second-order accurate. 7. Trajectory accuracy In a similar manner described in McGregor (199), we define the accuracy of the trajectories by the normalized L norm D D D L D A 1/ exact [x x ] d x. (7) [x x ] d The results for various methods of obtaining the trajectories are illustrated in Tables 4 5 the spherical geodesic grid contains 64 points with a Courant number 1.1, 56 points with.7, respectively. These results are all shown for 0 meaning that the wave moves along the equator. A schematic of the grid containing 56 grid points is illustrated in Fig. 6. The results point toward the same conclusions, namely, that McGregor s scheme is extremely good that it increases in accuracy as the number of terms in the Taylor series N is increased. However, very little is gained beyond values of 4, which is in agreement with the findings in McGregor (199). For this reason, results for N 4 are not shown. 8. Conclusions The determination of departure points are explored for spherical geodesic grids in Cartesian space. The midpoint rule, which is an interpolating iterative scheme, is compared against McGregor s noninterpolating noniterative method. McGregor s method yields better results but no benefits are gained by using more than four terms in the Lagrangian Taylor series expansion. McGregor (199) showed how to apply this scheme on rectangular grids. This paper extends McGregor s method to unstructured triangular grids. The difficulty in applying McGregor s method to unstructured grids is that derivatives at the grid points need to be obtained in order to get the higher-order Taylor series expansion terms. This can be done for unstructured grids by constructing the derivatives in an element by element approach. This approach is illustrated for the unstructured triangular grids composing the spherical geodesic grids by using the linear triangular basis functions introduced in Giraldo (1997). Once these functions have been defined, we can then apply the strategy for forming derivatives illustrated here. The numerical derivatives are compared against analytic solutions for the cosine hill function its derivatives. FIG. 6. The spherical geodesic grid with 56 points.

13 JULY 1999 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE 1661 These results show that the numerical derivatives are quite accurate especially for the low-order derivatives. An order of accuracy analysis is performed that demonstrates the order of accuracy of this strategy to be second order. Therefore, it is quite similar to the centered finite difference approach used in McGregor (199), but for unstructured triangular grids. Acknowledgments. I would like to thank the Office of Naval Research for supporting this work through Program PE-06045N. APPENDIX D Triangular Basis Function Theorem 1. The basis functions ax i by i cz i i(x), (A1) deter a yz yz, b xz xz, c xy xy, i j k k j i k j j k i j k k j x1 x x deter y1 y y, z z z 1 define a set of linear cardinal basis functions, that is, (x ) i j 1 if i j 0 if i j. Proof. The conditions to be satisfied by a linear interpolation on a triangle in three-dimensional space are the following: x (x)x (x)x (x)x 1 1 y (x)y (x)y (x)y 1 1 z (x)z (x)z (x)z, 1 1 (A) which just says that the coordinates within the triangular element are dependent on the vertices of that element. Equation (A) can be written in the following matrix form: x x x (x) x 1 1 y1 y y (x) y. z z z (x) z 1 Using Cramer s rule to invert this matrix system yields the following relations for the natural coordinates, x x x x1 x x y y y y1 y y z z z z1 z z 1(x), (x), x1 x x x1 x x y1 y y y1 y y z z z z z z 1 1 x1 x x y1 y y z1 z z (x), x1 x x y1 y y z z z 1 which can be written more compactly in terms of scalar vector products as x (x x ) x (x1 x ) 1(x), (x), x (x x ) x (x x ) 1 1 x (x1 x ) (x), x 1 (x x ) finally we can write (A) as (A) x (xj x k) i(x), (A4) x i (xj x k) the following identities have been used: (x x ) (x x ) i j j i x (x x ) x (x x ) x (x x ). i j k j k i k i j From (A1) Q.E.D. x i (xj x k) i(x i) 1 x i (xj x k) x j (xj x k) x k (xj x j) i(x j) 0 x i (xj x k) x i (xj x k) x k (xj x k) x j (xk x k) i(x k) 0. x i (xj x k) x i (xj x k) Theorem. Furthermore, the basis functions (A1) satisfy the relation for a monotonic interpolant i i1 (x) 1 x T, 1,, T 1,, represents the triangle composed of the vertices (x 1, x, x ). Proof. Taking the sum of the basis functions in (A) using the identity (x i x i ) 0 gives

14 166 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW VOLUME 17 i i1 (x) x [(xx ) (x x 1) (x1 x ) (x1 x 1)]. x 1 (xx ) (A5) The numerator of (A5) can now be factored to yield i i1 1 x [(x x 1) (x x 1)] (x). x (x x ) The denominator can be hled in a similar fashion to yield x [(x x 1) (x x 1)] i(x), (A6) i1 x 1 [(x x 1) (x x 1)] the identity x i (x j x i ) x j (x i x i ) 0 has been used. The terms inside the brackets of (A6) are exactly the components of the normal vector to the triangle (x 1, x, x ). In other words N (x x 1 ) (x x 1 ). From the definition of the plane defined by this triangle which is N (x x 1 ) 0 we get x N x 1 N, which gives for (A6) x N i(x) 1. i1 x 1 N Q.E.D. Theorem. The integral of any combination of the basis functions i (x) within each triangle can be given in closed form as follows: deter!!! 1 d, (A7) ( )! x1 x x deter y1 y y. (A8) z z z 1 Proof. From (A), the mapping from (x, y, z) ( 1,, )is dx x x x d 1 1 dy y1 y y d. dz z1 z z d Let 1, from theorem, 1 1 so 1. Therefore, the integral becomes 1 (x,y,z) d [ ] 1 1 deter (1 ) d d, 0 0 which gives for the first integral in brackets by virtue of integration by parts 0 1 (1 ) d! 1 (1 ), ( 1)( ) ( 1) but by completing the factorial in the denominater, we get 1!! 1 (1 ) d (1 ). ( 1)! 0 Integrating the remaing terms, we get 1 (x,y,z) d deter!!( 1)!, ( 1)!( 1)( ) ( ) simplifying completing the factorial yields Q.E.D. 1 (x,y,z) deter!!! d. ( )! REFERENCES Côté, J., 1988: A Lagrange multiplier approach for the metric terms of semi-lagrangian models on the sphere. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 114, Giraldo, F. X., 1997: Lagrange Galerkin methods on spherical geodesic grids. J. Comput. Phys., 16, Le Roux, D. Y., C. A. Lin, A. Staniforth, 1997: An accurate interpolating scheme for semi-lagrangian advection on an unstructured mesh for ocean modelling. Tellus, 49A, McDonald, A., J. R. Bates, 1989: Semi-Lagrangian integration of a gridpoint shallow water model on the sphere. Mon. Wea. Rev., 117, McGregor, J. L., 199: Economical determination of departure points for semi-lagrangian models. Mon. Wea. Rev., 11, 1 0. Ritchie, H., 1987: Semi-Lagrangian advection on a Gaussian grid. Mon. Wea. Rev., 115, Silvester, P., 1969: High-order polynomial triangular finite elements for potential problems. Int. J. Eng. Sci., 7, Williamson, D. L., J. B. Drake, J. J. Hack, R. Jakob, P. N. Swarztrauber, 199: A stard test set for numerical approximations to the shallow water equations in spherical geometry. J. Comput. Phys., 10, 11 4.