A comparison of integration methods for atmospheric transport-chemistry problems

This paper is devoted to the time integration of stiff atmospheric transport-chemistry problems from air pollution modeling. Off-the-shelf solvers are not feasible for air pollution problems due to the large number of species and the 3D nature. This has led to the development and use of special techniques of which operator splitting is the most popular one. This paper presents a comparison between standard operator splitting, source splitting and approximate matrix factorization. All methods under consideration are comparable in costs measured step wise. The comparison is directed at real-life problems. For that purpose a regional air pollution model is used.