Baroclinic

thumb|right|300px|Density lines and isobar (meteorology)|isobars cross vertically in a baroclinic fluid. thumb|right|300px| Visualization of a (fictive) formation of isotherms (red-orange) and isobars (blue) in a baroclinic atmospheric layering. thumb|right|upright=1.2|A rotating tank experiment modelling baroclinic eddies in the atmosphere In fluid dynamics, the baroclinity (often called baroclinicity) of a stratified fluid is a measure of how misaligned the gradient of pressure is from the gradient of density in a fluid. In meteorology, a baroclinic flow is one in which the density depends on both temperature and pressure (the fully general case). A simpler case, barotropic flow, allows for density dependence only on pressure, so that the curl of the pressure-gradient force vanishes.

Baroclinity is proportional to: \nabla p \times \nabla \rho