A radiative-convective model based on constrained maximum entropy production

Labarre, Vincent; Paillard, Didier; Dubrulle, Bérengère

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-365-2019

Articles | Volume 10, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-365-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Thermodynamics and optimality in the Earth system and its...

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-365-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 3

Research article

|

09 Jul 2019

Research article |

| 09 Jul 2019

A radiative-convective model based on constrained maximum entropy production

Vincent Labarre, Didier Paillard, and Bérengère Dubrulle

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Final revised paper (published on 09 Jul 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 27 Sep 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review of a "Radiative Convective Model based on constrained Maximum Entropy Production" by Labarre et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 15 Nov 2018
- AC1: 'Responses to the comments of the first referee', Vincent Labarre, 19 Jan 2019
RC2: 'Interesting approach but unclear details', Stan Schymanski, 23 Dec 2018
- AC2: 'Responses to the comments of Stan Schymanski', Vincent Labarre, 19 Jan 2019
AC3: 'overtime request', Vincent Labarre, 06 Mar 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (24 Jan 2019) by Michel Crucifix

AR by Vincent Labarre on behalf of the Authors (18 Mar 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (27 Mar 2019) by Michel Crucifix

RR by Stan Schymanski (25 Apr 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have improved the manuscript considerably, and I would like to thank them for the helpful responses to my comments. Unfortunately, some of my major concerns remain:

1) The computation of entropy production is not consistent with the thermodynamic literature: The authors suggest that the difference in inverse temperatures drives the exchange of "moist static energy", consisting of sensible heat, latent heat and potential energy (Eq. 1), and therefore the relevant entropy production is the between-layers exchange of moist static energy divided by temperature (Eq. 5). However, the components of "moist static energy" exchange are actually driven by different forces. Only the sensible heat component is driven by a temperature difference, whereas latent heat flux is ultimately driven by a vapour concentration difference and potential energy changes are driven by buoyancy differences. Hence the entropy production terms associated with each of these components should be calculated separately.

2) Disregard for the second law of thermodynamics at local scale: In Eq. 5, the authors formulate the total entropy production as the sum of entropy production terms related to each between-layer exchange. On P6L10, the authors then formulate mi>0 as an additional constraint. This would not be necessary if they actually respected the second law of thermodynamics for each inter-layer exchange individually, as negative mi would result in negative entropy production terms (this is why de-mixing does not happen spontaneously).

3) The analysis and results are not easily reproducible, if at all. I agree that a large code without documentation is of very limited use, but I think that a paper without code and data is of even less use. I cannot see how Figures 3-6 could be reproduced using the information given in this manuscript. The data availability statement is still missing.

Due to these shortcomings and the potential to confuse readers about the appropriate use of the second law of thermodynamics, I regret that I still cannot recommend publication of the manuscript in its current form.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (28 May 2019) by Michel Crucifix

AR by Vincent Labarre on behalf of the Authors (06 Jun 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (17 Jun 2019) by Michel Crucifix

AR by Vincent Labarre on behalf of the Authors (17 Jun 2019) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

We tried to represent atmospheric convection induced by radiative forcing with a simple climate model based on maximum entropy production. Contrary to previous models, we give a minimal description of energy transport in the atmosphere. It allows us to give better results in terms of temperature and vertical energy flux profiles.