Mathematical study of the β-plane model for rotating fluids in a thin layer

AbstractThis article is concerned with an oceanographic model describing the asymptotic behaviour of a rapidly rotating and incompressible fluid with an inhomogeneous rotation vector; the motion takes place in a thin layer. We first exhibit a stationary solution of the system which consists of an interior part and a boundary layer part. The spatial variations of the rotation vector generate strong singularities within the boundary layer, which have repercussions on the interior part of the solution. The second part of the article is devoted to the analysis of two-dimensional and three-dimensional waves. It is shown that the thin layer effect modifies the propagation of three-dimensional Poincaré waves by creating small scales. Using tools of semiclassical analysis, we prove that the energy propagates at speeds of order one, i.e. much slower than in traditional rotating fluid models