LAGRANGIAN AND HAMILTONIAN METHODS IN GEOPHYSICAL FLUID DYNAMICS

This note is an introduction to the variational formulation of fluid dy-namics and the geometrical structures thus made apparent. A central theme is the role of continuous symmetries and the associated conser-vation laws. These are used to reduce more complex to simpler ones, and to study the stability of such systems. Many of the illustrations are taken from models arising from geophysical fluid dynamics