Dr. Jingfeng Wang

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology 

10:00 am,29 July,2014

No.303,Keyan Building, IAP  

Abstract

A new model of energy budgets over the Earth’s surface was formulated based on the theory of maximum entropy production (MEP).Built on the modern non-equilibrium thermodynamics, Bayesian probability theory and information theory,analytical solutions of the partition of surface radiative fluxes into (turbulent and/or conductive) heat fluxes are derived as functions of surface temperature and humidity.Compared to the classical models, the MEP model: (1) is constrained by surface energy balance; (2) is independent of gradient variables (i.e. temperature and moisture), (3) does not include wind speed and roughness lengths in the model formulation; (4) covers the entire range of soil moisture from dryness to saturation over land surfaces, and (5) is not sensitive to the uncertainties of model input and parameters and free of location specific tuning (empirical) parameters. The MEP model has been tested using in-situ observations over bare soil, canopy, water, snow and ice surfaces with encouraging results. It is the first physically based moisture-gradient independent evapotranspiration (ET) model for all land-cover types. The MEP model may be used as a retrieval algorithm for remote sensing of surface fluxes and a physical parameterization of surface energy budgets in coupled regional and global land/ocean-atmosphere models.