On the forward-in-time upstream advection scheme for non-uniform and time-dependent flow

Summary The classical forward-in-time upstream advection scheme for uniform flow field has been extended to include non-uniform and time-dependent advective flow. This generalised scheme is described in one dimension for an advective flow which varies both in time and in space. The classical upstream advection scheme is only first-order accurate both in time and in space if the advective flow is not uniform. Higherorder accuracy in both time and space, however, can be easily obtained in the generalised scheme.This generalised scheme with third-order accuracy is applied to the one-dimensional inviscid Burgers equation (socalled self-advection problem), two-dimensional steady flow, and to a time-split shallow water equation model. The results are compared with those obtained from the Takacs' (1985) scheme and from a standard third-order semi-Lagrangian scheme, and also with those obtained from the fourth-order Lax-Wendroff scheme of Crowley (1968) in the time-split shallow water equation model. It is shown that the generalised scheme performs as well as, but is more efficient than, the standard semi-Lagrangian scheme with same order. It is much more accurate than the Takacs' scheme which has large dissipation errors, especially for the flow with strong deformation. In contrast, the generalised scheme has very weak dissipation and has much better dispersion and shapeconserving properties. Although the fourth-order Lax-Wendroff scheme has higher accuracy and can give more accurate numerical solutions for uniform advective flow or solid rotational flow (Crowley, 1968), it is inferior to the generalised third-order scheme for non-uniform flow with strong deformation or large spatial gradients. This generalised scheme, therefore, has considerable application potential in different numerical models, especially for the models using time-split algorithms.With 8 Figures