Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 June 2008
In this lecture I try to explain the basic concepts related to fluidmotions when a background rotation dominates the flows.In particular, the notions of geostrophic flow, Ekman layer, Ekmancirculation are explained. However, the main focus of this lecture is onthe eigenmodes which occur in such a context and I emphasize here thespecial effects conveyed to inertial and gravito-inertial modesby the hyperbolic nature of the governing operators. A final sectionintroduces the case of the elliptic instability which I recentlysuggested as one of the processes of binary synchronization.