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The climate at maximum entropy production by Meridional atmospheric and oceanic heat fluxes
Author(s) -
Grassl Hartmut
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.49710745110
Subject(s) - zonal and meridional , atmospheric sciences , environmental science , energy balance , climatology , latitude , heat flux , entropy production , albedo (alchemy) , meridional flow , heat transfer , geology , thermodynamics , physics , art , geodesy , performance art , art history
In a zonally‐average energy balance climate model (principal features as with Paltridge 1975) with the four unknowns ‐ surface temperature T , cloud amount N , total meridional heat fluxes within the ocean and the atmosphere O m + A m , and total vertical heat flux LE+CH , the maximum entropy production by meridional heat fluxes is used as a constraint to solve the system for the four unknowns in all 10 boxes of the model. Since the solution at maximum entropy production by meridional heat fluxes agrees quite well with present mean conditions, this maximum principle is used as a working hypothesis for climate sensitivity studies avoiding the use of fixed cloud amount and meridional heat fluxes. the resulting sensitivities partly agree and disagree with those of similar energy balance climate models. Disagreement is particularly high if an ice‐albedo feed‐back is included. the feed‐back is strongly reduced because of opposing effects of cloud amount in high latitudes.