Thermodynamics and Climate Change
A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Thermodynamics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 January 2026 | Viewed by 22
Special Issue Editors
Interests: action/statistical mechanics; environmental chemistry; Gibbs energy
Interests: environmental chemistry; molecular sensing; catalytic transition states; energy
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Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Novel methods are needed to understand the thermodynamic controls of climate and its range of variation. These should include quantitative relations between parameters such as gradients in temperature, pressure and chemical or Gibbs potential, matter and energy flows including by radiation with classical quantum field theory. Statistical and action mechanics offer new ways of assessing greenhouse warming and energy and matter flows down gradients and across phase boundaries. Seasonal variations in temperature and pressure vary enthalpy and Gibbs energy controlling material flows.
Submissions in the following areas of thermodynamics are encouraged.
- Articles applying classical Maxwellian thermodynamics to climate are welcome, particularly if including environmental feedbacks typified by Van’t Hoff effects of change in temperature on equilibrium constants, or the Le Chatelier principle responding to variation in environmental conditions (see DOI:10.3390/thermo2040028 for an example leading to emissions of CO2 from warming seawater). Examples of reversible heat-work processes storing energy or non-reversible processes failing to do so are of interest. Classical thermodynamics also has a role in defining the factors concerned in recycling energy by greenhouse gases.
- Action or statistical mechanics now provides simpler means to estimate entropy and absolute Gibbs energy for gas molecules. By replacing fractional exponents of temperature or pressure with scalar action, it is a revision of the statistical mechanics introduced by Willard Gibbs in the 19th century and extended in the 20th century (DOI:3390/applmech4020037). Using well-known properties of molecules such as mass, bond length and enthalpy, symmetry and degrees of freedom of motion, entropy is a product of Boltzmann’s constant (k) with the logarithm of the quantum number, a quotient of scalar action with Gibbs reduced quantum of action (ħ). This enables a new approach to the thermodynamics of the troposphere (www.ackle.au), including vortical action and entropy in anticyclones and cyclones.
- A new interface between Maxwellian electromagnetic fields and Gibbs energy fields could be explored. Dimensions for capacitance (1/r), voltage (m1/2r1/2ω), and charge (m1/2r3/2ω) have inverted the analogues in classical physics of radius, the square root of force, and charge of radius by the square root of force, their overall product yielding energy (mr2ω2). Is there a role for these dimensionally truncated properties to be applied in climate science such as in turbulent storm intensity, convective rainfall in cyclones, or pressure gaps from condensation of water vapour.
Prof. Dr. Ivan Kennedy
Dr. James Chapman
Dr. Migdat Hodzic
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- thermodynamics
- climate change
- Gibbs energy
- statistical mechanics
- environmental chemistry
- quantum field theory
- climate science
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