Title: Bridging Scales in Weather and Climate Models with Adaptive Mesh Refinement Techniques

By: Christiane Jablonowski, Jared Ferguson, Hans Johansen, Phillip Colella

Abstract: Extreme atmospheric events such as tropical cyclones are inherently complex multi-scale phenomena. Such extremes are a challenge to simulate in conventional atmosphere models which typically use rather coarse uniform-grid resolutions. Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) techniques seek to mitigate these challenges. They dynamically place high-resolution grid patches over user-defined features of interest, thus providing sufficient local resolution over e.g. a developing cyclone while limiting the total computational burden. Studying such techniques in idealized simulations enables the assessment of the AMR approach in a controlled environment and can assist in identifying the effective refinement choices for more complex, realistic simulations. In this talk, we present a non-hydrostatic, finite-volume dynamical core, which implements refinement in both space and time on a cubed-sphere grid. Idealized 2D shallow-water and 3D test cases are discussed including interacting vortices, flows over topography, and a tropical cyclone simulation. These simulations test the effectiveness of both static and dynamic grid refinements as well as the sensitivity of the model results to various adaptation criteria.