Contexts
The concept of potential temperature applies to any stratified fluid. It is most frequently used in the atmospheric sciences and oceanography. The reason that it is used in both fluids is that changes in pressure result in warmer fluid residing under colder fluid- examples being the fact that air temperature drops as one climbs a mountain and water temperature can increase with depth in very deep ocean trenches and within the ocean mixed layer. When potential temperature is used instead, these apparently unstable conditions vanish.
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“The “text” is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)