UC Irvine

We establish global existence and uniqueness theorems for the two-dimensional non-diffusive Boussinesq system with viscosity only in the horizontal direction, which arises in Ocean dynamics. This work improves the global well-posedness results established recently by R. Danchin and M. Paicu for the Boussinesq system with anisotropic viscosity and zero diffusion. Although we follow some of their ideas, in proving the uniqueness result, we have used an alternative approach by writing the transported temperature (density) as $\theta = \Delta\xi$ and adapting the techniques of V. Yudovich for the 2D incompressible Euler equations. This new idea allows us to establish uniqueness results with fewer assumptions on the initial data for the transported quantity $\theta$. Furthermore, this new technique allows us to establish uniqueness results without having to resort to the paraproduct calculus of J. Bony. We also propose an inviscid $\alpha$-regularization for the two-dimensional inviscid, non-diffusive Boussinesq system of equations, which we call the Boussinesq-Voigt equations. Global regularity of this system is established. Moreover, we establish the convergence of solutions of the Boussinesq-Voigt model to the corresponding solutions of the two-dimensional Boussinesq system of equations for inviscid flow without heat (density) diffusion on the interval of existence of the latter. Furthermore, we derive a criterion for finite-time blow-up of the solutions to the inviscid, non-diffusive 2D Boussinesq system based on this inviscid Voigt regularization. Finally, we propose a Voigt-$\alpha$ regularization for the inviscid 3D Boussinesq equations with diffusion, and prove its global well-posedness. It is worth mentioning that our results are also valid in the presence of the $\beta$-plane approximation of the Coriolis force.