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Development of the fundamental fluid dynamics used in analyzing flows in physical oceanography and meteorology. Fundamentals of vorticity dynamics and geostrophy, inviscid theory of Rossby waves, and Ekman boundary layers.

Scaling laws, non-dimensional parameters, and asymptotic expansions are all used to gain physical understanding from solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations in a rotating frame of reference. Immediate applications are the dynamics of weather, climate, oceans, and large lakes, however, engineering applications may relate to rapidly rotating systems with many degrees of freedom.

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics in the news:

NOAA image of hurricane Katrina (Aug.-29, 2005)

Last updated: Fri May 25 22:06:25 EDT 2012