Parallel semi-Lagrangian advection on the sphere using PVM

Numerical methods for solving the advection problem in spherical geometry are examined in conjunction with techniques for solving the shallow-water equations on the sphere. Eulerian methods are restricted by the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition and the semi-Lagrangian method is an alternative approach for taking longer time steps. Recent progress in the development of distributed MIMD parallel algorithms for semi-Lagrangian advection is discussed. A parallel message-passing implementation of advection on the sphere based on PVM is described. Parallel performance results on an Intel iPSC/860 are presented and it is established that the code is scalable for reasonable sub-grid dimensions on each processor.<
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