Dry atmospheric Ertel potential vorticity
ID: dry-atmospheric-ertel-potential-vorticity
For dry atmospheric thermodynamics, choose potential temperature as the materially conserved scalar in Ertel's theorem. The displayed density-normalized scalar has units . Its conservation in adiabatic inviscid motion depends on conservative body forces and a composition-fixed equation of state. It differs in normalization from the Boussinesq approximation convention using buoyancy without the variable density factor. Large-scale balanced weather can be organized by its distribution, with potential-vorticity inversion additionally requiring balance and boundary information.
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