Diffusion and Kinetic Theory on Very Long Time and Large Space Scales.

This paper extends the concept of epitropy, as introduced in previous work, to capture the effects of extreme tail behavior arising naturally over very long time and large space scales. Epitropy has some qualities that parallel entropy, although it is not quite the same. Its function is to capture the effects of a probability distribution function (PDF) having only a finite populated domain, which was introduced to eliminate divergent moment integrals.

Tales of Tails.

Typical human-scaled considerations of thermodynamic states depend primarily on the core of associated speed or other relevant distributions, because the wings of those distributions are so improbable that they cannot contribute significantly to averages. However, for long timescale regimes (slow time), previous papers have shown otherwise. Fluctuating local equilibrium systems have been proven to have distributions with non-Gaussian tails demanding more careful treatment.

On Time Scales of Intrinsic Oscillations in the Climate System.

Proxy temperature data records featuring local time series, regional averages from areas all around the globe, as well as global averages, are analyzed using the Slow Feature Analysis (SFA) method. As explained in the paper, SFA is much more effective than the traditional Fourier analysis in identifying slow-varying (low-frequency) signals in data sets of a limited length. We find the existence of a striking gap from ~1000 to about ~20,000 years, which separates intrinsic climatic oscillations with periods ranging from ~60 years to ~1000 years, from the longer time-scale periodicities (20,000 year+) involving external forcing associated with Milankovitch cycles.

Radiative Transfer and Generalized Wind.

Dissimilar flows can be compared by exploiting the fact that all flux densities divided by their conjugate volume densities form velocity fields, which have been described as generalized winds. These winds are an extension of the classical notion of wind in fluids which puts these distinct processes on a common footing, leading to thermodynamical implications. This paper extends this notion from fluids to radiative transfer in the context of a classical two-stream atmosphere, leading to such velocities for radiative energy and entropy.

Thermodynamics at Very Long Time and Space Scales.

Any observation, and hence concept, is limited by the time and length scale of the observer and his instruments. Originally, we lived on a timescale of minutes and a length scale of meters, give or take an order of magnitude or two. Therefore, we devloped laboratory sized concepts, like volume, pressure, and temperature of continuous media.

Between Waves and Diffusion: Paradoxical Entropy Production in an Exceptional Regime.

The entropy production rate is a well established measure for the extent of irreversibility in a process. For irreversible processes, one thus usually expects that the entropy production rate approaches zero in the reversible limit. Fractional diffusion equations provide a fascinating testbed for that intuition in that they build a bridge connecting the fully irreversible diffusion equation with the fully reversible wave equation by a one-parameter family of processes.

Measure of predictability.

Many techniques have been developed to measure the difficulty of forecasting data from an observed time series. This paper introduces a measure which we call the "forecast entropy" designed to measure the predictability of a time series. We use attractors reconstructed from the time series and the distributions in the regular and tangent spaces of the data which comprise the attractor.