Jerome Noir got his PhD in 2000 from the University of Grenoble on the "Earth’s core dynamics induced by precession”, he then held a research associate position at UCLA from 2001 to 2010 before joining ETH Zürich as the head of the experimental laboratory of geophysical fluid dynamics in the Earth’s science department and study advisor of the geophysics Master. He is currently involved in a multidisciplinary Simons foundation project on "Fundamental Fluid Processes in Climate, Stellar and Planetary Modelling.”

In this presentation, I will briefly introduce the geophysical context and explain why the abundant results on the topic in oceanography and atmospheric sciences may not apply to those deep fluid layers. I will then present the results from a dedicated experimental study of the Spinup of a rapidly rotating fluid in a straight cylinder with chessboard-like topography at the bottom as a proxy to address topography driven energy dissipation. I will show the particular role played by inertial waves to radiate the energy away from the topography, and shape the internal flows. I will conclude by presenting ongoing and future theoretical, numerical and experimental investigations to gain further insights."