Talk:Potential vorticity

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Could you please add a description that is a little simpler to comprehend to an average person. Keep the original wording, the comprehensiveness is great, but a simple "in other words it is .... " would greatly enhance this definition. Steve

• Alright, I'll see what I can do. --Storm Horizon 23:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I added a bunch of things for in this page. Specifically, I explained the historical development of the term potential vorticity, and distinguished between shallow water potential vorticity, Ertel potential vorticity, and quasi-geostrophic potential vorticity. I also added interpretation in each section, and incorporated with what was originally in the article. For the last section, "PV Invertibility Principle", I described how we can use PV, especially QGPV, to deduce the full flow field -- this application is where PV view really shines. One thing that I changed, or rather expanded, from the original text is the original first paragraph, from "Carl-Gustaf Rossby first ..." to "...Ertel's form of potential vorticity is given by the equation:". One reason is that in Rossby's 1936 paper, he indeed talked about Gulf Stream, but there is no mentioning about "potential vorticity". Another reason is that the derivation of Ertel is worth looking into because of its theoretical elegance and important implications XavierLi (talk) 15:37, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]