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
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