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.