A global non-hydrostatic dynamical core using the spectral element method on a cubed-sphere grid

A new global model with a non-hydrostatic (NH) dynamical core is developed. It employs the spectral element method (SEM) in the horizontal discretization and the finite difference method (FDM) in the vertical discretization. The solver includes a time-split third-order Runge-Kutta (RK3) time-integration technique. Pursuing the quasi-uniform and pole singularity-free spherical geometry, a cubed-sphere grid is employed. To assess the performance of the developed dynamical solver, the results from a number of idealized benchmark tests for hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic flows are presented and compared. The results indicate that the non-hydrostatic dynamical solver is able to produce solutions with good accuracy and consistency comparable to reference solutions. Further evaluation of the model with a full-physics package demonstrates its capability in reproducing heavy rainfall over the Korean Peninsula, which confirms that coupling of the dynamical solver and full-physics package is robust.