In recent decades, great progress has been made in our understanding of zonal jets across many subjects - atmospheric science, oceanography, planetary science, geophysical fluid dynamics, plasma physics, magnetohydrodynamics, turbulence theory - but communication between researchers from different fields has been weak or non-existent. Even the terminology in different fields may be so disparate that researchers working on similar problems do not understand each other. This comprehensive, multidisciplinary volume will break cross-disciplinary barriers and aid the advancement of the subject. It presents a state-of-the-art summary of all relevant branches of the physics of zonal jets, from the leading experts. The phenomena and concepts are introduced at a level accessible to beginning graduate students and researchers from different fields. The book also includes a very extensive bibliography.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Isaac Held; Part I. Introduction: 1. The world of jets Boris Galperin and Peter L. Read; Part II. Zonal Jets in Nature: 2. Terrestrial atmospheres Jonathan L. Mitchell, Thomas Birner, Guillaume Lapeyre, Noboru Nakamura, Peter L. Read, Gwendal Riviere, Agustin Sánchez-Lavega and Geoffrey K. Vallis; 3. Oceans Peter C. Cornillon, Eric Firing, Andrew F. Thompson, Leonid M. Ivanov, Igor Kamenkovich, Christian E. Buckingham and Yakov D. Afanasyev; 4. Gas giants Agustin S´anchez-Lavega, Lawrence A. Sromovsky, Adam P. Showman, Anthony D. Del Genio, Roland M. B. Young, Ricardo Hueso, Enrique Garcia-Melendo, Yohai Kaspi, Glenn S. Orton, Naiara Barrado-Izagirre, David S. Choi and John M. Barbara; 5. Exoplanets and the sun James Y-K. Cho, Heidar Th. Thrastarson, Tommi T. Koskinen, Peter L. Read, Steven M. Tobias, Woosok Moon, and Jack W. Skinner; Part III. Jets in Laboratories: 6. Zonal jet flows in the laboratory: an introduction Peter L. Read; 7. Convectively driven turbulence, Rossby waves and zonal jets: experiments on the Coriolis platform Peter L. Read, Joel Sommeria and Roland M. B. Young; 8. Turbulence, Rossby waves and zonal jets on the polar β-plane: experiments with laboratory altimetry Yakov D. Afanasyev; 9. Zonal jets in laboratory: experiments with electromagnetically forced flows Stefania Espa, Gabriella Di Nitto, Boris Galperin and Jesse Hoemann; Part IV. Zonal Flows in Magnetically Confined Plasmas: 10. Theory Paul W. Terry; 11. Experiments Teresa Estrada; Part V. Genesis and Maintenance of Zonal Jets: Turbulence and Instabilities: 12. General results on zonation in rotating systems with a β-effect and the electromagnetic force Bin Cheng and Alex Mahalov; 13. Barotropic and zonostrophic turbulence Boris Galperin, Semion Sukoriansky, Roland M. B. Young, Rei Chemke, Yohai Kaspi, Peter L. Read and Nadejda Dikovskaya; 14. Zonal jet formation by potential vorticity mixing at large and small scales Richard K. Scott and David G. Dritschel; 15. Radiating instability Jinbo Wang, Michael A. Spall, Joseph Pedlosky and Igor Kamenkovich; 16. Modulational instability in basic plasma and geophysical models Brenda E. Quinn, Sergey V. Nazarenko, Colm P. Connaughton, Steven Gallagher and Bogdan Hnat; 17. β-plume mechanism of creation of zonal jets by a spatially localized forcing Yakov D. Afanasyev and Leonid M. Ivanov; 18. Meridional propagation of zonal jets in ocean gyres Balasubramanya T. Nadiga and David N. Straub; 19. Dynamics of baroclinic multiple zonal jets Pavel Berloff and Igor Kamenkovich; Part VI. Genesis and Maintenance of Zonal Jets: Statistical Theories: 20. Statistical closures and zonal flows John A. Krommes and Jeffrey B. Parker; 21. Direct statistical simulation of a jet J. Brad Marston, Wanming Qi and Steven M. Tobias; 22. Zonal flows as statistical equilibria Freddy Bouchet and Antoine Venaille; 23. Zonostrophy and other quadratic invariants in drift and quasi-geostrophic wave turbulence Katie L. Harper, Brenda E. Quinn, Sergey V. Nazarenko and Miguel D. Bustamante; 24. Kinetic theory and quasilinear theories of jet dynamics Freddy Bouchet, Cesare Nardini and Tomas Tangarife; 25. Statistical state dynamics: a new perspective on turbulence in shear flow Brian F. Farrell and Petros J. Ioannou; 26. Zonal flow as pattern formation Jeffrey B. Parker and John A. Krommes; 27. Emergence of non-zonal coherent structures Nikolaos A. Bakas and Petros J. Ioannou; Part VII. Material Transport in Flows with Jets: 28. Anisotropic and inhomogeneous eddy-induced transport in flows with jets Igor Kamenkovich, Pavel Berloff and Irina I. Rypina; 29. Turbulence, diffusion and mixing barriers in flows with zonal jets Boris Galperin, Semion Sukoriansky, Stefania Espa, Guglielmo Lacorata, Nadejda Dikovskaya and Jesse Hoemann.