The Existence of Weak Solutions for the Vorticity Equation Related to the Stratosphere in a Rotating Spherical Coordinate System

Abstract

In this paper, based on the Euler equation and mass conservation equation in spherical coordinates, the ratio of the stratospheric average width to the planetary radius and the ratio of the vertical velocity to the horizontal velocity are selected as parameters under appropriate boundary conditions. We establish the approximate system using these two small parameters. In addition, we consider the time dependence of the system and establish the governing equations describing the atmospheric flow. By introducing a flow function to code the system, a nonlinear vorticity equation describing the planetary flow in the stratosphere is obtained. The governing equations describing the atmospheric flow are transformed into a second-order homogeneous linear ordinary differential equation and a Legendre’s differential equation by applying the method of separating variables based on the concepts of spherical harmonic functions and weak solutions. The Gronwall inequality and the Cauchy–Schwartz inequality are applied to priori estimates for the vorticity equation describing the stratospheric planetary flow under the appropriate initial and boundary conditions. The existence and non-uniqueness of weak solutions to the vorticity equation are obtained by using the functional analysis technique.