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Importance of temporal variability for hydrological predictions based on the maximum entropy production principle
Author(s) -
Westhoff Martijn C.,
Zehe Erwin,
Schymanski Stanislaus J.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2013gl058533
Subject(s) - potential evaporation , environmental science , entropy production , atmospheric sciences , entropy (arrow of time) , surface runoff , principle of maximum entropy , mathematics , hydrology (agriculture) , evaporation , meteorology , statistical physics , geology , physics , statistics , ecology , thermodynamics , geotechnical engineering , biology
This work builds on earlier work by Kleidon and Schymanski (2008) who explored the use of the maximum entropy production (MEP) principle for modeling hydrological systems. They illustrated that MEP can be used to determine the partitioning of soil water into runoff and evaporation—which determines hydroclimatic conditions around the Globe—by optimizing effective soil and canopy conductances in a way to maximize entropy production by these fluxes. In the present study, we show analytically that under their assumption of constant rainfall, the proposed principle always yields an optimum where the two conductances are equal, irrespective of rainfall rate, evaporative demand, or gravitational potential. Subsequently, we show that under periodic forcing or periodic variations in one resistance (e.g., vegetation seasonality), the optimal conductance does depend on climatic drivers such as the length of dry spells or the time of closure of stomata.