  In this paper we study the error propagation of numerical schemes for the
advection equation in the case where high precision is desired. The numerical
methods considered are based on the fast Fourier transform, polynomial
interpolation (semi-Lagrangian methods using a Lagrange or spline
interpolation), and a discontinuous Galerkin semi-Lagrangian approach (which is
conservative and has to store more than a single value per cell).
  We demonstrate, by carrying out numerical experiments, that the worst case
error estimates given in the literature provide a good explanation for the
error propagation of the interpolation-based semi-Lagrangian methods. For the
discontinuous Galerkin semi-Lagrangian method, however, we find that the
characteristic property of semi-Lagrangian error estimates (namely the fact
that the error increases proportionally to the number of time steps) is not
observed. We provide an explanation for this behavior and conduct numerical
simulations that corroborate the different qualitative features of the error in
the two respective types of semi-Lagrangian methods.
  The method based on the fast Fourier transform is exact but, due to round-off
errors, susceptible to a linear increase of the error in the number of time
steps. We show how to modify the Cooley--Tukey algorithm in order to obtain an
error growth that is proportional to the square root of the number of time
steps.
  Finally, we show, for a simple model, that our conclusions hold true if the
advection solver is used as part of a splitting scheme.
