Prospective Study on Applications of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics to Climate Modeling

While focusing on the ability of climate models, this paper demonstrates the role and status of atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics in building and developing climate models. Possible reasons for the insufficiency in climate models are analyzed, and the significance of non-equilibrium thermodynamics in further development of climate models, especially of regional climate models, is put forward. Besides, in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, the second law of thermodynamics indicates that, in an isolated system, irreversible process develops along the direction of increasing entropy whatever status the system is at the beginning, while the minimum entropy production principle states that non-equilibrium open system grows toward the status with minimum entropy production, which can be used as the development criterion for the non-equilibrium open system. As the typical open non-equilibrium system, atmospheric system undoubtedly follows some of the theorems of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Therefore, the non-equilibrium thermodynamics theory has broad applicational prospects in climate modeling and prediction.