Abstract
We prove global existence and asymptotic behavior of classical solutions for two dimensional inviscid rotating shallow water system with small initial data subject to the zero relative vorticity condition. One of the key steps is a reformulation of the problem into a symmetric quasilinear Klein-Gordon system with quadratic nonlinearity, for which the global existence of classical solutions is then proved with combination of the vector field approach and the normal form method. We also probe the case of general initial data and reveal a lower bound for the lifespan that is almost inversely proportional to the size of the initial relative vorticity. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.