Existence and uniqueness of weak solutions to viscous primitive equations for certain class of discontinuous initial data

Abstract: We establish some conditional uniqueness of weak solutions to the viscous primitive equations, and as an application, we prove the global existence and uniqueness of weak solutions, with the initial data taken as small $L<sup>\infty$ perturbations of functions in the space $X=\left{v\in (L^{6(\Omega))^{2|\partial_zv\in}} (L<sup>2(\Omega))<sup>2\right}$; in particular, the initial data are allowed to be discontinuous. Our result generalizes in a uniform way the result on the uniqueness of weak solutions with continuous initial data and that of the so-called $z$-weak solutions.