Eric P. Chassignet is professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Florida State University, Tallahassee, Director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies and Co-director of the Florida Climate Institute. He was awarded the 2008 National Oceanographic Partnership Program's Excellence in Partnering Award for his coordination of the US Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment: Global Ocean Prediction with the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (US GODAE HYCOM). Dr Chassignet has published two previous books in collaboration with Dr Verron: Ocean Modeling and Parameterization (1998) and Ocean Weather Forecasting (2004). Claudia Cenedese is associate scientist with tenure in the Department of Physical Oceanography at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), faculty of the WHOI Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Summer Program, and co-director of the WHOI Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Jacques Verron is director of research at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and former director of the Laboratoire des Ecoulements Géophysiques et Industriels in Grenoble, France. Dr Verron was awarded the silver medal from the CNRS in 1994 for his work on ocean data assimilation.

• 1. Gravity currents: theory and laboratory Paul Linden; 2. Theory of oceanic buoyancy-driven flows Joseph Pedlosky; 3. Buoyancy-forced circulation and downwelling in marginal seas Michael Spall; 4. Buoyant coastal currents Steve Lentz; 5. Overflows and convectively driven flows Sonya Legg; 6. An ocean climate modeling perspective on buoyancy-driven flows William Large; 7. Buoyancy-driven flows in eddying ocean models Anne Marie Tréguier, Bruno Ferron and Raphael Dussin; 8. Atmospheric buoyancy-driven flows Sylvie Malardel; 9. Volcanic flows Andy Woods; 10. Gravity flow on a steep slope Christophe Ancey.

'… this book provides a very useful introduction to a wide range of ideas, theoretical concepts, observations, laboratory experiments, and numerical simulations that have been successful at accounting for the observed phenomenology … Reading this book can only be the first leg of a lifelong journey into the study of these fascinating flows.' Remi Tailleux, SIAM Review