• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.333-341
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• 2014

A new set of basis functions was constructed using the Rossby-Haurwitz waves, which are the eigenfunctions of nondivergent barotropic vorticity equations on the sphere. The basis functions were designed to be non-separable, that is, not factored into functions of either the longitude or the latitude. Due to this property, the nodal lines of the functions are aligned neither along with the meridian nor the parallel. The basis functions can be categorized into groups of which members have the same degree or the total wavenumber-like index on the sphere. The orthonormality of the basis functions were found to be close to the machine roundoffs, giving the error of $O(10^{-15})$ or $O(10^{-16})$ for double-precision computation (64 bit arithmetic). It was demonstrated through time-stepping procedure that the basis functions were also the eigenfunctions of the non-divergent barotropic vorticity equations. The projection of the basis functions was carried out onto the low-resolution geopotential field of Gaussian bell, and compared with the theory. The same projections were performed for the observed atmospheric-geopotential height field of 500 hPa surface to demonstrate decomposition into the fields that contain disturbance of certain range of horizontal scales. The usefulness of the new basis functions was thus addressed for application to the eigenmode analysis of the atmospheric motions on the global domain.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.173-181
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• 2017

The stability of the steady Rossby-Haurwitz wave (R-H wave) in the nondivergent barotropic model (NBM) on the sphere was investigated with the normal mode method. The linearized NBM equation with respect to the R-H wave was formulated into the eigenvalue-eigenvector problem consisting of the huge sparse matrix by expanding the variables with the spherical harmonic functions. It was shown that the definite threshold R-H wave amplitude for instability could be obtained by the normal mode method. It was revealed that some unstable modes were stationary, which tend to amplify without the time change of the spatial structure. The maximum growth rate of the most unstable mode turned out to be in almost linear proportion to the R-H wave amplitude. As a whole, the growth rate of the unstable mode was found to increase with the zonal- and total-wavenumber. The most unstable mode turned out to consist of more-than-one zonal wavenumber, and in some cases, the mode exhibited a discontinuity over the local domain of weak or vanishing flow. The normal mode method developed here could be readily extended to the basic state comprised of multiple zonalwavenumber components as far as the same total wavenumber is given.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.476-483
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• 2015

The high-order Laplacian-type filter, which is capable of providing isotropic and sharp cut-off filtering on the spherical domain, is essential in processing geophysical data. In this study, a spherical high-order filter was designed by combining the Fourier method with finite difference-method in the longitude and latitude, respectively. The regular grid system was employed in the filter, which has uniform angular spacing including the poles. The singularity at poles was eliminated by incorporating variable transforms and continuity-matching boundary conditions across poles. The high-order filter was assessed using the Rossby-Haurwitz wave, the observed geopotential, and observed wind field. The performance of the filter was found comparable to the filter based on the Galerkin procedure. The filter, employing the finite difference method, can be designed to give any target order of accuracy, which is an important advantage being unavailable in other methods. The computational complexity is represented with 2n-1 diagonal matrices solver with n being the target order of accuracy. Along with the availability of arbitrary target-order, it is also advantageous that the filter can adopt the reduced grid to increase computational efficiency.