A mixed finite-element discretisation of the shallow-water equations

Abstract

Abstract. This paper introduces a mixed finite-element shallow-water model on the sphere. The mixed finite-element approach is used as it has been shown to be both accurate and highly scalable for parallel architecture. Key features of the model are an iterated semi-implicit time-stepping scheme, a finite-volume transport scheme, and the cubed sphere grid. The model is tested on a number of standard spherical shallow-water test cases. Results show that the model produces similar results to other shallow-water models in the literature.