A nonhydrostatic model for simulation of airflow over mesoscale bell-shaped ridges

This paper describes a nonhydrostatic and incompressible mesoscale model formulation using a terrain-following coordinate system. A tensor transformation procedure is used to derive a diagnostic equation for the nonhydrostatic pressure field. The model features a simplified second-order turbulence closure scheme. The two-dimensional version of the nonhydrostatic model, as well as the corresponding hydrostatic model, are applied to simulate stably stratified airflow over mesoscale bell-shaped mountain ridges. The results show that the nonhydrostatic model is capable of simulating nonhydrostatic dynamics of mesoscale lee wave systems such as the trapped wave phenomenon.