Potential Temperature — temp_pot

Calculates the potential air temperature, which is the temperature that a parcel of air would have if it were expanded or compressed adiabatically to a standard pressure (usually 1000 hPa).

Usage

temp_pot_temp(...)

# Default S3 method
temp_pot_temp(t, elev, ...)

# S3 method for class 'weather_station'
temp_pot_temp(weather_station, height = "lower", ...)

Arguments

...: Additional arguments.
t: Temperature in °C.
elev: Elevation above sea level in m.
weather_station: A weather_station object.
height: Height of measurement, either "upper" or "lower".

Value

Potential temperature in °C.

Details

The potential temperature ($\theta$) is calculated using the formula: $$\theta = T \left(\frac{p_0}{p}\right)^{R/c_p}$$ where: $T$ is the temperature in Kelvin, $p_0$ is the standard pressure (1000 hPa), $p$ is the actual pressure, $R$ is the specific gas constant for dry air (287 J/(kg·K)), $c_p$ is the specific heat at constant pressure (1004 J/(kg·K)).

The argument elev is elevation above sea level in m. It is converted internally to pressure using pres_p(). The 1013.25 hPa default in pres_p() is used for pressure estimation, while potential temperature uses 1000 hPa as the reference pressure.

References

Bendix 2004, p. 261.

Examples

# Calculate potential temperature at a given temperature and elevation
temp_pot_temp(t = 20, elev = 500)
#> [1] 23.80798