Geophysical Research Letters, 31(12), L12609, doi:10.1029/2004GL019970, 2004

Application of the Yin-Yang grid to a thermal convection of a Boussinesq fluid with infinite Prandtl number in a three-dimensional spherical shell

Masaki Yoshida and Akira Kageyama

Abstract
A new numerical finite difference code has been developed to solve a thermal convection of a Boussinesq fluid with infinite Prandtl number in a three-dimensional spherical shell. A kind of the overset (Chimera) grid named ``Yin-Yang grid'' is used for the spatial discretization. The grid naturally avoids the pole problems which are inevitable in the latitude-longitude grids. The code is applied to numerical simulations of mantle convection with uniform and variable viscosity. The validity of the Yin-Yang grid for the mantle convection simulation is confirmed.