Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Lecture Notes on Coastal and Estuarine Studies Series, Volume 21.

The last one or two decades have witnessed an increased interest in topographic Rossby waves, both from a theoretical computational as well as an observational point of view. However, even though long periodic processes were observed in lakes and ocean basins with considerable detail, it appears that interpretation in terms of physical models is not sufficiently conclusive. The reasons for this lack in understanding may be sought both, in the insufficient spatial resolution or the brevity of the time series of the available data and the inadequacy of the theoretical understanding of long periodic oscillating processes in lakes and ocean bays. Advancement will emerge from intensified studies of both aspects, but it is equally our believe that the understanding of long periodic oscillations in lakes is presently likely to profit most from a theoretical-computational study of topographic Rossby waves in enclosed basins.