geopotential

plural geopotentials

1. climatologyThe work that must be done at a given altitude in raising a unit mass from sea level to that altitude against the earth's gravitational field.

   It might sound puzzling that the ageostrophic geopotential (or the ageostrophic pressure in z-coordinate) has no impact on the evolution of the vorticity of a quasi-geostrophic disturbance and yet it affects the perturbation kinetic energetics (not globally but locally).

   2004, Zhu Xun, Li Xiaofan, Cai Ming, Observation, Theory And Modeling Of Atmospheric Variability, →ISBN, page 13