Last week our group member @annuPanwar_sci successfully defended her PhD thesis on diurnal temperature variations and how they are affected by evaporation and vegetation. Very well done, and congratulations, Annu! @mpibgc

~ Axel Kleidon ~ 5 Comments

Evaporation cools, right? What may sound so obvious was the topic of Annu’s PhD thesis: to look into observations and find the effects of evaporation in how surface and near-surface air temperatures vary throughout the day. The results are not quite as obvious, and we learned a lot. Here is a brief summary of her thesis, with its contents spread over three papers. Very nice work!

Continue reading “Last week our group member @annuPanwar_sci successfully defended her PhD thesis on diurnal temperature variations and how they are affected by evaporation and vegetation. Very well done, and congratulations, Annu! @mpibgc” →
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Can we solve the freshwater problem by taking moisture out of the atmosphere with dehumidifiers? When we look at how the hydrologic cycle does its work, we get a straight and clear answer: no, we don’t solve the problem!

~ Axel Kleidon ~ 3 Comments

In Germany, the construction of Tesla’s Gigafactory near Berlin draws its attention, including its substantial need for freshwater. Despite its many lakes, the area around Berlin is among the driest in Germany. The atmosphere contains water vapor, and it seems like a tempting source for freshwater, just sitting there to be harvested by some form of technology. This is what a company claims to do (and quite a few others elsewhere as well). But can this promise hold up?

Continue reading “Can we solve the freshwater problem by taking moisture out of the atmosphere with dehumidifiers? When we look at how the hydrologic cycle does its work, we get a straight and clear answer: no, we don’t solve the problem!” →

“Kraftwerk Erde: Wie der belebte Planet Energie umwandelt” – Vortrag bei #FasziAstroOnline, heute Abend, 13.01.2022, 19 Uhr, live auf youtube.  Mehr Infos im Blog. @MPI_BGC @HdAstro

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

Die Erde arbeitet wie ein Kraftwerk, indem sie Sonnenenergie in andere Formen umwandelt, die die Winde der Atmosphäre, den Wasserkreislauf, und auch das Leben und die Menschheit auf der Erde erhalten.  Diese Umwandlungen folgen den Gesetzen der Thermodynamik, die sowohl die Richtung als auch die Grenzen setzt.  Aber Erdsystemprozesse beeinflussen sich auch gegenseitig, sodass man einen Blick auf das Gesamtsystem braucht.  In diesem Vortrag zeige ich, dass man allein durch diesen grundlegenden physikalischen Ansatz schon erstaunlich viel vom Erdsystem verstehen kann – über die fundamentalen Rolle von Energie und Entropie, wie Leben den Planeten verändert, aber auch zu angewandten Themen wie dem Klimawandel und warum die Photovoltaik die Technologie ist, die bei weitem den größten Beitrag zur Energiewende liefern wird.

Continue reading ““Kraftwerk Erde: Wie der belebte Planet Energie umwandelt” – Vortrag bei #FasziAstroOnline, heute Abend, 13.01.2022, 19 Uhr, live auf youtube.  Mehr Infos im Blog. @MPI_BGC @HdAstro” →

“Was leistet die Erde und was trägt die Menschheit dazu bei? Nachhaltigkeit aus thermodynamischer Sicht.” zoom-Vortrag, öffentlich, Montag, 13.12.2021, 18:00, tinyurl.com/HM-ForFuture

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

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.

Continue reading ““Was leistet die Erde und was trägt die Menschheit dazu bei? Nachhaltigkeit aus thermodynamischer Sicht.” zoom-Vortrag, öffentlich, Montag, 13.12.2021, 18:00, tinyurl.com/HM-ForFuture” →

At #AGU21, we present updates on understanding diurnal temperature variations on land and on deriving precipitation sensitivities from observations using “clear-sky” temperatures and maximum power

~ annupanwar ~ Leave a comment

Corona has not yet gone away, but the AGU Fall Meeting nevertheless takes place, in a hybrid format. Annu Panwar will be physically there, giving an invited talk on her PhD thesis on diurnal temperature variations (see, e.g., her paper in HESS) and a poster, while Sarosh Alam Ghausi will be giving his poster on precipitation scaling virtually.

Continue reading “At #AGU21, we present updates on understanding diurnal temperature variations on land and on deriving precipitation sensitivities from observations using “clear-sky” temperatures and maximum power” →

Empowering the Earth system with technology: Using thermodynamics to illustrate the possibility of sustained future growth of human societies

~ Axel Kleidon ~ 6 Comments

Global warming, biodiversity loss, freshwater shortages, food crisis — there are many reasons to think that the planetary future looks rather grim for human societies.  Is there any hope that things can turn out well?  It is quite hard to remain optimistic, yet when looking at it from basic physics one can find a way forward.  In this book chapter that has just been published online I looked at the issue of sustainability and the role of technology using our thermodynamic Earth system approach.

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“Erneuerbare Energien – einfach nachgerechnet” – unser Beitrag zum MINT Festival der @UniJena am Donnerstag.  Hier gibt’s weitere Infos und Links. #moMINTmal21 @MPI_BGC

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

Wieviel erneuerbare Energie gibt es eigentlich? Reicht sie für die Energiewende in Deutschland?  Die Antworten liefern einfache, physikalisch-basierte Abschätzungen, bei der das Erdsystem im Mittelpunkt steht sowie die Umwandlungen von der Energie im Sonnenlicht in andere Formen. Und dabei steht etwas Physik, genauer gesagt, die Thermodynamik im Mittelpunkt. Das Ergebnis ist nicht ganz so, wie man es vielleicht erwarten würde. Nämlich, dass es zwar jede Menge erneuerbare Energie gibt, aber auch, dass die Nutzung der Solarenergie mit großem Abstand auf Platz 1 liegt, und nicht die Windenergie. Selbst im nicht ganz so sonnigen, aber oft windigen Deutschland. 

Continue reading ““Erneuerbare Energien – einfach nachgerechnet” – unser Beitrag zum MINT Festival der @UniJena am Donnerstag.  Hier gibt’s weitere Infos und Links. #moMINTmal21 @MPI_BGC” →

#vEMS21: Our updates on using #thermodynamics for land-atmosphere interactions, the precipitation response to #globalwarming, and the #windenergy potential in the German bight

~ Axel Kleidon ~ Leave a comment

With summer coming to a close, we are back to present new insights from ongoing research in extreme precipitation events, offshore wind energy and thermodynamics at the European Meteorological Society Annual Meeting 2021. The event, which will be held online next week (6 – 10 September 2021), focuses on weather and climate research and services for the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Read on to find out more details about when and what each of us will be presenting.

Continue reading “#vEMS21: Our updates on using #thermodynamics for land-atmosphere interactions, the precipitation response to #globalwarming, and the #windenergy potential in the German bight” →

#goldschmidt2021 We contribute our work on dissipative dynamics and frequency distributions in river geochemistry and an update on the thermodynamics of planetary evolution.

~ Axel Kleidon ~ 1 Comment

Our work on thermodynamics and the Goldschmidt conference on geochemistry – well, that seems like an obvious match. But what we contribute is a little different, and the match is not quite so straightforward. What our perspective adds is (a) a focus on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and disequilibrium, and the processes that generate and dissipate this disequilibrium, and (b) a system‘s view which accounts for the environmental setting as well as the interactions and feedbacks within the Earth as an overarching thermodynamic system. Both of our contributions next week nicely illustrate these points and show how important it is to think „thermodynamics“ beyond its more narrow application to geochemical reactions.

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The Danish energy island in the North sea: By how much could the atmospheric response to many wind turbines lower the expected yields? Using KEBA to derive a simple, physical answer.

~ Axel Kleidon ~ 2 Comments

Denmark plans to expand offshore wind energy, and to do so, wants to create an artificial island in the North sea.  This plan is based on a cost-benefit analysis, which is based on an estimate of how much electricity generation can be expected from wind turbines in that region.  Such wind resource estimates use highly resolved wind fields, turbine characteristics as well as their spatial arrangement, but they typically neglect the atmospheric response to the turbines.  Each turbine removes kinetic energy from the atmosphere to generate its electricity, so more turbines remove more energy from the atmosphere, leaving a greater impact behind.  What this means is that such estimates typically turn out to be too high (see e.g., here), with a greater bias with greater installed capacity, as we have shown for German offshore scenarios, or in a new study just published.  So when a colleague asked me about my opinion, I thought this is a good occasion to use our KEBA approach, which takes the atmospheric response into account, and redo the estimate.

Continue reading “The Danish energy island in the North sea: By how much could the atmospheric response to many wind turbines lower the expected yields? Using KEBA to derive a simple, physical answer.” →