Optimized composite finite difference schemes for atmospheric flow modeling

In this paper, we use some finite difference methods in order to solve an atmospheric flow problem described by an advection–diffusion equation. This flow problem was solved by Clancy using forward‐time central space (FTCS) scheme and is challenging to simulate due to large errors in phase and amplitude which are generated especially over long propagation times. Clancy also derived stability limits for FTCS scheme. We use Von Neumann stability analysis and the approach of Hindmarsch et al. which is an improved technique over that of Clancy in order to obtain the region of stability of some methods such as FTCS, Lax–Wendroff (LW), Crank–Nicolson. We also construct a nonstandard finite difference (NSFD) scheme. Properties like stability and consistency are studied. To improve the results due to significant numerical dispersion or numerical dissipation, we derive a new composite scheme consisting of three applications of LW followed by one application of NSFD. The latter acts like a filter to remove the dispersive oscillations from LW. We further improve the composite scheme by computing the optimal temporal step size at a given spatial step size using two techniques namely; by minimizing the square of dispersion error and by minimizing the sum of squares of dispersion and dissipation errors.