An Asymptotic-Preserving Dual Formulation Finite-Volume Method for the Thermal Rotating Shallow Water Equations
This work addresses the challenge of simulating geophysical flows with multi-scale dynamics, providing a numerical method that maintains accuracy across different flow regimes for researchers in geophysical fluid dynamics.
The authors propose a second-order asymptotic-preserving dual formulation finite-volume method for the thermal rotating shallow water equations, enabling accurate simulation across both low and high Rossby number regimes. The method simultaneously solves conservative and nonconservative forms to handle multiscale dynamics, achieving robust shock capturing and correct asymptotic behavior.
We propose a new second-order asymptotic-preserving (AP) dual formulation finite-volume (DF-FV) method for the thermal rotating shallow water (TRSW) equations. The TRSW system models geophysical flows characterized by horizontal temperature/density variations, exhibiting multi-scale dynamics due to the coexistence of fast rotational waves and slower advective processes. To efficiently address challenges associated with the multiscale nature of the TRSW system, we follow the DF-FV framework and develop a DF-FV method, in which both the conservative and nonconservative (primitive) forms of the equations are simultaneously solved, allowing the method to exploit the complementary strengths of each representation across different flow regimes. The primitive formulation is better suited for preserving the correct asymptotic behavior in nearly thermal quasi-geostrophic (TQG) regimes characterized by a low Rossby number, while the conservative formulation is essential for robust shock capturing in high-Rossby-number regimes, in which nonconservative discretizations may fail to converge to physically relevant weak solutions.