A simple justification of the singular limit for equatorial shallow-water dynamics

The equatorial shallow-water equations at low Froude number form a symmetric hyperbolic system with large variable-coefficient terms. Although such systems are not covered by the classical Klainerman-Majda theory of singular limits, the first two authors recently proved that solutions exist uniformly and converge to the solutions of the long-wave equations as the height and Froude number tend to 0. Their proof exploits the special structure of the equations by expanding solutions in series of parabolic cylinder functions. A simpler proof of a slight generalization is presented here in the spirit of the classical theory. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.