Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 March 2006
Slow, steady, mechanically driven, axisymmetric motion of a stably stratified, electrically conducting, rotating fluid is studied. Attention is focused upon the parameter values for which hydromagnetic effects first become important in a rotating stratified fluid and upon the nature of their influence on the interior flow of that fluid. It is found that hydromagnetic effects are able to alter the flow of a stratified rotating fluid at much weaker magnetic field strengths than the flow of an unstratified fluid. Specifically, the interior azimuthal flow is altered if E/α2 [Lt ] σS [Lt ] 1 or if E [Lt ] α2 and 1 [Lt ] σS, where E = ν/ΩL2, $E = \nu/\Omega L^2,\quad\alpha^2 = \overline{\sigma}B^2/\rho\Omega $ and $S = \overline{\alpha}\Delta Tg\nu/\Omega^2\kappa L$. The hydromagnetic effects act to decrease the vertical shear in the azimuthal flow from the levels which would occur in the absence of magnetic fields.