The Williams Step Increases the Stability and Accuracy of the Hora Time Filter

The explicit weakly-stable second-order accurate leapfrog scheme is widely used in the numerical models of weather and climate, in conjunction with the Robert-Asselin (RA) and RobertAsselin-Williams (RAW) time filters. The RA and RAW filters successfully suppress the spurious computational mode associated with the leapfrog method, but also weakly damp the physical mode and degrade the numerical accuracy to first-order. The recent higher-order Robert-Asselin (hoRA) time filter reduces the undesired numerical damping of the RA and RAW filters and increases the accuracy to second up-to third-order. We prove that the combination of leapfrog-hoRA and Williams’ step increases the stability by 25%, improves the accuracy of the amplitude of the physical mode up-to two significant digits, effectively suppresses the computational modes, and further diminishes the numerical damping of the hoRA filter.