If you were to imagine/invent some extremely large gravitational gradient, then I suppose it could play a role, but it would not in any normal system.

Conduction, convection, and radiation all occur more rapidly over large thermal gradients.

Higher order gradient energy terms will be negligible, except at very large gradients.

This can be alleviated by regularization, such as penalization of states with large spatial gradients.

It has also been shown to swim across large gradients in temperature.

From Headgear haulage way car descends the steep hill having a large gradient.

The thermosphere in this range has large gradients of pressure, temperature and composition, and varies greatly due to space weather.

The architects of the centre took advantage of the large east-west gradient of the site to build underground car parking and service access.

Freight trains rarely use the summit line because its large gradients.

A large horizontal gradient exists over the Strait, and winds accelerate downgradient from high to low pressure within the gap.