One practical use of the decameter is for altitude of geopotential heights in meteorology.

Q-vectors can be determined wholly with: geopotential height () and temperature on a constant pressure surface.

An isoheight or isohypse is a line of constant geopotential height on a constant pressure surface chart.

These occur when the westerly winds at 60N and 10hPa (geopotential height) reverse, i.e. become easterly.

In the above table, geopotential height is calculated from a mathematical model in which the acceleration due to gravity is assumed constant.

Using the EDAS or global dataset, the ambient pressure is converted into geopotential height.

This group continued to map the northern-hemisphere stratospheric temperature and geopotential height for many years using radiosondes and rocketsondes.

The meteorological behaviour of the Northern Hemisphere winter was simulated by prescribing at the model lower boundary (316mbar) a perturbation geopotential height field.

Very often both the high and the low are closed, meaning that the isobars (or constant geopotential height lines) defining the high-low close to form a circle.

Given a grid point field of geopotential height, storm tracks can be visualized by contouring its average standard deviation, after the data has been band-pass filtered.

Each observation is augmented with the meteorological conditions such as the temperature, potential temperature, geopotential height, and equivalent PV latitude.

A plot of geopotential height for a single pressure level shows the troughs and ridges, Highs and Lows, which are typically seen on upper air charts.

One usually speaks of the geopotential height of a certain pressure level, which would correspond to the geopotential height necessary to reach the given pressure.

Later models substituted the geometric coordinate with a pressure coordinate system, in which the geopotential heights of constant-pressure surfaces become dependent variables, greatly simplifying the primitive equations.

The unusually strong intensity of the trough in the region on June 8-9, with a 500-millibar geopotential height measured at about 2.7 standard deviations below normal, also favored an intense tornado outbreak.

After the correction was made the offset was 8 27 m suggesting that the derived geopotential height was not significantly different from the measured (GPS) height (Figure 1b).

The geopotential thickness between pressure levels - difference of the 850 hPa and 1000 hPa geopotential heights for example - is proportional to mean virtual temperature in that layer.

Geophysical scientists often use geopotential height as a function of pressure rather than pressure as a function of geometric height, because doing so in many cases makes analytical calculations more convenient.

These all ranked above the land measurement that came out best, which wasn't temperature either (it was geopotential height at 500 hPa, a measure of the elevation at which that specific atmospheric pressure occurs).

Other variants of the equation are possible; for example, the geostrophic wind vector can be expressed in terms of the gradient of the geopotential height Φ on a surface of constant pressure:

Geopotential height is a vertical coordinate referenced to Earth's mean sea level - an adjustment to geometric height (elevation above mean sea level) using the variation of gravity with latitude and elevation.

The analysis has involved the development of a four-dimensional assessment of the atmosphere during the drought over various temporal scales using a knowledge of temperature, humidity, geopotential height, wind, clouds, precipitation amount, and current weather.

Geopotential height contours can be used to calculate the geostrophic wind, which is faster where the contours are more closely spaced and tangential to the geopotential height contours.

The barotropic vorticity equation is the simplest way for forecasting the movement of Rossby waves (that is, the troughs and ridges of 500 hPa geopotential height) over a limited amount of time (a few days).

The geopotential height of this point was calculated in 1986 as part of the United European Levelling Network (UELN), based on the Amsterdam Ordnance Datum, which represents the average level of the North Sea.