Two dimensional finite element method with quadrilateral basis functions was applied to the spherical high order filter on the spherical surface limited area domain. The basis function consists of four shape functions which are defined on separate four grid boxes sharing the same gridpoint. With the basis functions, the first order derivative was expressed as an algebraic equation associated with nine point stencil. As the theory depicts, the convergence rate of the error for the spherical Laplacian operator was found to be fourth order, while it was the second order for the spherical Laplacian operator. The accuracy of the new high order filter was shown to be almost the same as those of Fourier finite element high order filter. The two-dimension finite element high order filter was incorporated in the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model as a hyper viscosity. The effect of the high order filter was compared with the built-in viscosity scheme of the WRF model. It was revealed that the high order filter performed better than the built in viscosity scheme did in providing a sharper cutoff of small scale disturbances without affecting the large scale field. Simulation of the tropical cyclone track and intensity with the high order filter showed a forecast performance comparable to the built in viscosity scheme. However, the predicted amount and spatial distribution of the rainfall for the simulation with the high order filter was closer to the observed values than the case of built in viscosity scheme.

The high-order Laplacian-type filter, which is capable of providing isotropic and sharp cut-off filtering on the spherical domain, is essential in processing geophysical data. In this study, a spherical high-order filter was designed by combining the Fourier method with finite difference-method in the longitude and latitude, respectively. The regular grid system was employed in the filter, which has uniform angular spacing including the poles. The singularity at poles was eliminated by incorporating variable transforms and continuity-matching boundary conditions across poles. The high-order filter was assessed using the Rossby-Haurwitz wave, the observed geopotential, and observed wind field. The performance of the filter was found comparable to the filter based on the Galerkin procedure. The filter, employing the finite difference method, can be designed to give any target order of accuracy, which is an important advantage being unavailable in other methods. The computational complexity is represented with 2n-1 diagonal matrices solver with n being the target order of accuracy. Along with the availability of arbitrary target-order, it is also advantageous that the filter can adopt the reduced grid to increase computational efficiency.