• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.393-401
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• 2013

Spherical harmonics power spectrum of the geopotential field of Gaussian-bell type on the sphere was investigated using integral formula that is associated with Legendre polynomials. The geopotential field of Gaussian-bell type is defined as a function of sine of angular distance from the bell's center in order to guarantee the continuity on the global domain. Since the integral-formula associated with the Legendre polynomials was represented with infinite series of polynomial, an estimation method was developed to make the procedure computationally efficient while preserving the accuracy. The spherical harmonics power spectrum was shown to vary significantly depending on the scale parameter of the Gaussian bell. Due to the accurate procedure of the new method, the power (degree variance) spanning over orders that were far higher than machine roundoff was well explored. When the scale parameter (or width) of the Gaussian bell is large, the spectrum drops sharply with the total wavenumber. On the other hand, in case of small scale parameter the spectrum tends to be flat, showing very slow decaying with the total wavenumber. The accuracy of the new method was compared with theoretical values for various scale parameters. The new method was found advantageous over discrete numerical methods, such as Gaussian quadrature and Fourier method, in that it can produce the power spectrum with accuracy and computational efficiency for all range of total wavenumber. The results of present study help to determine the allowable maximum scale parameter of the geopotential field when a Gaussian-bell type is adopted as a localized function.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.333-341
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• 2014

A new set of basis functions was constructed using the Rossby-Haurwitz waves, which are the eigenfunctions of nondivergent barotropic vorticity equations on the sphere. The basis functions were designed to be non-separable, that is, not factored into functions of either the longitude or the latitude. Due to this property, the nodal lines of the functions are aligned neither along with the meridian nor the parallel. The basis functions can be categorized into groups of which members have the same degree or the total wavenumber-like index on the sphere. The orthonormality of the basis functions were found to be close to the machine roundoffs, giving the error of $O(10^{-15})$ or $O(10^{-16})$ for double-precision computation (64 bit arithmetic). It was demonstrated through time-stepping procedure that the basis functions were also the eigenfunctions of the non-divergent barotropic vorticity equations. The projection of the basis functions was carried out onto the low-resolution geopotential field of Gaussian bell, and compared with the theory. The same projections were performed for the observed atmospheric-geopotential height field of 500 hPa surface to demonstrate decomposition into the fields that contain disturbance of certain range of horizontal scales. The usefulness of the new basis functions was thus addressed for application to the eigenmode analysis of the atmospheric motions on the global domain.