GLOBAL EXISTENCE OF WEAK SOLUTIONS TO THE COMPRESSIBLE PRIMITIVE EQUATIONS OF ATMOSPHERIC DYNAMICS WITH DEGENERATE VISCOSITIES

We show the existence of global weak solutions to the three-dimensional compressible primitive equations of atmospheric dynamics with degenerate viscosities. In analogy with the case of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, the weak solutions satisfy the basic energy inequality, the Bresh-Desjardins entropy inequality, and the Mellet-Vasseur estimate. These estimates play an important role in establishing the compactness of the vertical velocity of the approximating solutions, and therefore are essential to recover the vertical velocity in the weak solutions.