Exploring forms of the moist shallow‐water equations using a new compatible finite‐element discretisation

Abstract The moist shallow‐water equations offer a promising route for advancing understanding of the coupling of physical parametrisations and dynamics in numerical atmospheric models, an issue known as “physics–dynamics coupling”. Without moist physics, the traditional shallow‐water equations are a simplified form of the atmospheric equations of motion and so are computationally cheap but retain many relevant dynamical features of the atmosphere. Introducing physics into the shallow‐water model in the form of moisture provides a tool to experiment with numerical techniques for physics–dynamics coupling in a simple dynamical model. In this article, we compare some of the different moist shallow‐water models by writing them in a general formulation. The general formulation encompasses three existing forms of the moist shallow‐water equations and also a fourth, previously unexplored formulation. The equations are coupled to a three‐state moist physics scheme that interacts with the resolved flow through source terms and produces two‐way physics–dynamics feedback. We present a new compatible finite‐element discretisation of the equations and apply it to the different formulations of the moist shallow‐water equations in three test cases. The results show that the models capture generation of cloud and rain and physics–dynamics interactions, and demonstrate some differences between moist shallow‐water formulations and the implications of these different modelling choices.