With global warming, heatwaves are becoming more frequent, intense, and prolonged, impacting ecosystems, food production, infrastructure, and human health. In our recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment led by Yinglin Tian, we show that heatwaves do not all operate in the same way. They arise from diverse processes that are reflected in characteristic differences in surface energy balance partitioning, each with distinct impacts on ecosystems and different trends under global warming.

On 23rd March 2024, Sarosh gave an invited talk at the International water conference on sustainable development goals (IWCSDG-2024) held at NIT Bhopal, India. His presentation focused on using thermodynamic limits as an additional constraint to model the hydrological cycle and estimate the hydrological fluxes.

Tejasvi recently joined our group as a Postdoc in October last year. He got a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai, India, working on land surface-atmosphere dynamics and information theory. Welcome, Tejasvi!

Downwelling longwave radiation dominantly heats the Earth’s surface across the globe and shows systematic variations in space and time. In our new paper, we showed that these variations are predominantly shaped by changes in the heat accumulation within the lower atmosphere, while changes in cloud-cover and water-vapor remain a secondary contributor.

Interested in getting a PhD on evaporation, water stress and droughts with observations and simple, physical theory? We have a new opening within the most recent call of the International Max-Planck Research School on global BioGeochemical Cycles (IMPRS-gBGC). Apply through the website by 21 August 2023.

Surface temperatures over land are affected by the vertical turbulent exchange of heat and moisture from the surface to the atmosphere. While these processes are inherently complex, we show in our new article that by accounting for thermodynamic limits, the observed temperature patterns follow relatively simple and predictable rules.

We just completed a series of lectures in India on the central importance of thermodynamics and limits in Earth system science, with examples from climatology, global warming, life, sustainability and renewable energy. Here is the link to the slides and some background material, in case you missed it, want to check or are interested in more information.

How does the second law of thermodynamics apply to the Earth system and why is it so important? As it turns out, it dominantly shapes natural Earth system functioning, from the climate system to hydrologic cycling, the biosphere, and renewable energy resources, yielding simple, emergent functioning as a consequence of systems operating at their thermodynamic limits. This short course provides the basics to understand why entropy is so important and how it shapes Earth system functioning.

Im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung “Lectures for Future”, zusammen veranstaltet von der Hochschule München und der LMU, hält Axel Kleidon einen Vortrag zu unserem thermodynamischen Erdsystemansatz und was man daraus für Nachhaltigkeit lernen kann. Der Vortrag ist öffentlich und kann über diesen Zoom Link gesehen werden.

I have an opening for a Postdoc position available in my group that is rather flexible and provides a lot of freedom because it is unattached to any research project (it is the succession of my co-worker Maik Renner, who advanced to a permanent position elsewhere).  I would like the research to broadly focus on advancing the application of thermodynamics and optimality principles to Earth system science, but the concrete topic is up to you.  So if you are curious to learn more about thermodynamics and how to apply it, I’d like you to think about a topic and apply!  The formal details are provided on our homepage here. Continue reading “Are you looking for a stimulating Postdoc opportunity? Our group has a position open, applying thermodynamics and optimality to Earth system science.” →

Global warming, the increase in near-surface temperature due to the enhanced greenhouse effect at global scale, has clearly been reflected in observations over the last 50 years. However, the severities of warming in different regions and different period differs a lot. Scientists have considered many factors which may contribute to shape the temperature trends.  For example, our ESD paper explained the stronger temperature trends over land compared to oceans by the different ways by which the diurnal variation in solar radiation is buffered on land and ocean. Here we introduce another simple but significant factor, sunny and rainy days. Continue reading “Does global warming behave the same on rainy and sunny days? No, it doesn’t, and our new JGR paper explains why.” →

Cutting down tropical rainforests and replacing them with soybean fields alters how the land surface functions, and this affects the atmosphere.  Rainforests have a heterogeneous canopy that absorbs sunlight very well and is aerodynamically rough, and they have deep-reaching root systems that allow them to draw water from deep within the soil, especially during the dry season when water input by precipitation is limited.  When trees are cut down and replaced by soybean fields, these physical aspects of the land surface are changed, thus impacting how the absorbed solar energy is partitioned at the surface, and how this energy is transferred into the overlying atmosphere.  Tropical deforestation is one of the many aspects of global change that has been dealt with over the last decades, evaluated with observations and climate models, so what else can add new insights?  And what can these insights be used for? Continue reading “Do roughness changes of tropical deforestation affect surface energy balance partitioning? No, they don’t. That’s what we found when we estimated the effects from first principles.” →