Pseudospectral solution of atmospheric diffusion problems

Abstract

The pseudospectral method is applied to the solution of advection/diffusion problems arising from the dispersion of contaminants in the atmosphere. Two techniques are developed for the pseudospectral treatment of nonperiodic boundary conditions that typically exist in such problems. Calculations using the two forms of the pseudospectral method are presented for the dispersion of a contaminant emitted from an elevated, crosswind line source in the atmosphere. The results indicate that pseudospectral methods offer a promising alternative to finite-difference methods for such problems.

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