Navier-Stokes Equations with Navier Boundary Conditions for an Oceanic Model

We consider the Navier-Stokes equations in a thin domain of which the top and bottom surfaces are not flat. The velocity fields are subject to the Navier conditions on those boundaries and the periodicity condition on the other sides of the domain. This toy model arises from studies of climate and oceanic flows. We show that the strong solutions exist for all time provided the initial data belong to a "large" set in the Sobolev space H¹. Furthermore we show, for both the autonomous and the nonautonomous problems, the existence of a global attractor for the class of all strong solutions. This attractor is proved to be also the global attractor for the Leray-Hopf weak solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. One issue that arises here is a nontrivial contribution due to the boundary terms. We show how the boundary conditions imposed on the velocity fields affect the estimates of the Stokes operator and the (nonlinear) inertial term in the Navier-Stokes equations. This results in a new estimate of the trilinear term, which in turn permits a short and simple proof of the existence of strong solutions for all time.