The potential temperature of a parcel of fluid at pressure is the temperature that the parcel would acquire if adiabatically brought to a standard reference pressure, usually 1000 millibars. The potential temperature is denoted and, for air, is often given by
where is the current absolute temperature (in K) of the parcel, is the gas constant of air, and is the specific heat capacity at a constant pressure. This equation is often known as Poisson's equation.
Read more about Potential Temperature: Contexts, Comments, Potential Temperature Perturbations, Derivation, Related Quantities
Famous quotes containing the words potential and/or temperature:
“Humanity has passed through a long history of one-sidedness and of a social condition that has always contained the potential of destruction, despite its creative achievements in technology. The great project of our time must be to open the other eye: to see all-sidedly and wholly, to heal and transcend the cleavage between humanity and nature that came with early wisdom.”
—Murray Bookchin (b. 1941)
“This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice.... It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a few days’ duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)