barotropicadj.

1921 V. Bjerknes in Geofysiske Publikationer II. iv. 2 In all cases of well-defined curves of intersection and unit tubes, we shall call the field of mass baroclinic. In the case of degeneration we shall call it barotropic.

1934 D. Brunt Physical & Dynamical Meteorol. viii. 166 The fluid of ‘classical’ hydrodynamics, which is normally assumed to be homogeneous and incompressible, is obviously barotropic.

1949 Jrnl. Meteorol. 6 106/1 A detailed study of the character of nondivergent horizontal wave motion in a barotropic atmosphere.

1976 Sci. Amer. Mar. 54/3 The atmosphere is said to be barotropic, as opposed to baroclinic, where the available energy is mainly gravitational and is associated with horizontal temperature gradients.

1986 Icarus 68 325/1 Another possibility is that the observed feature is produced by some form of barotropic instability. In addition to the conventional type of shallow barotropic instability appropriate to the Earth, there is the possibility of an alternative deep form for the outer planets.

1950 Tellus II. 253/2 The correspondence is close and..much better than the barotropically computed change.

1978 Nature 10 Aug. 576/2 Shukla obtained barotropically unstable upper tropospheric modes..but failed to get a preferred scale of maximum growth for lower tropospheric disturbances.

1921 V. Bjerknes in Geofysiske Publikationer II. iv. 3 The case of barotropy appears, first when the equisubstantial surfaces coincide with the isobaric, i.e., when the specific volume, or the density, is a function of the pressure..and secondly, in the case of complete homogeneity.

1951 B. Haurwitz in T. F. Malone Compendium Meteorol. 403/1 The significance of the distinction between barotropy and baroclinity for the variation of the circulation of a fluid.

1959 S. L. Hess Introd. Theoret. Meteorol. xii. 193 Barotropy manifests itself on constant-level charts, in part, by parallelism of isobars and isotherms.