A Two-Stage Fourth-Order Multimoment Global Shallow-Water Model on the Cubed Sphere

A new multimoment global shallow-water model on the cubed sphere is proposed by adopting a two-stage fourth-order Runge–Kutta time integration. Through calculating the values of predicted variables at half time step t = t n + (1/2)Δ t by a second-order formulation, a fourth-order scheme can be derived using only two stages within one time step. This time integration method is implemented in our multimoment global shallow-water model to build and validate a new and more efficient numerical integration framework for dynamical cores. As the key task, the numerical formulation for evaluating the derivatives in time has been developed through the Cauchy–Kowalewski procedure and the spatial discretization of the multimoment finite-volume method, which ensures fourth-order accuracy in both time and space. Several major benchmark tests are used to verify the proposed numerical framework in comparison with the existing four-stage fourth-order Runge–Kutta method, which is based on the method of lines framework. The two-stage fourth-order scheme saves about 30% of the computational cost in comparison with the four-stage Runge–Kutta scheme for global advection and shallow-water models. The proposed two-stage fourth-order framework offers a new option to develop high-performance time marching strategy of practical significance in dynamical cores for atmospheric and oceanic models.