Appadu, A. Rao2018-10-082018-07Appadu, A.R. 2018, 'Atmospheric flow modelling using some finite difference methods', AIP Conference Proceedings, vol. 1978, no. 30023, pp. 1-4.0094-243X (print)1551-7616 (online)10.1063/1.5043673http://hdl.handle.net/2263/66777In this work, we compare the performance of some finite difference methods in order to solve an advection-diffusion equation which models atmospheric flows. This flow problem was solved by Clancy [3] using Forward-Time Central Space (FTCS) scheme and it is a rather challenging problem to simulate due to large errors in phase and amplitude which are generated especially over long propagation times. We use the following methods namely, FTCS, Lax-Wendroff (LW), Crank-Nicolson (CN) and a non-standard finite difference scheme (NSFD). To improve the results, we derive a new composite scheme consisting of three applications of Lax-Wendroff followed by one application of NSFD. The latter acts likes a filter to remove the dispersive oscillations from Lax-Wendroff. We further improve the composite scheme by computing the optimal temporal step size which minimises the dispersion error.en© 2018 AIP Publishing LLC. Article copyright remains as specified within the article.Finite difference methodsFlow problemForward-time central space (FTCS)Non-standard finite difference scheme (NSFD)Crank-Nicolson (CN)Lax-Wendroff (LW)Article