A robust definition of energy effectiveness for humidification dehumidification desalination systems

The abrupt temperature change (ATC) and warming hiatus (WH) phenomena impact global resources and the environment. However, information on the spatial and temporal variability in the ATC and WH over large regions, long time scales and densely distributed stations is lacking. In the study, based on average minimum, average and average maximum temperatures data from 1951 to 2016 from 622 meteorological stations in China, the spatial and temporal variability in the timing of the ATC and WH events and the characteristics before and after these events were revealed by using the Mann–Kendall test. In most areas of China, an ATC occurred in the three temperature parameters, and the onset of the changes occurred later at lower latitudes. The ATC in the average minimum temperature occurred earlier than that in the average temperature, and the ATC in the average maximum temperature occurred the latest. After the ATC, a WH occurred at most of the stations that experienced an increase in temperature, whereas a cooling hiatus (CH) did not occur at stations that experienced a decrease in temperature. The regions with decreasing temperatures were concentrated in the hilly and plain areas of southern China and in subtropical and tropical monsoon climate zones. The WH of the average temperature occurred earlier than that of the average maximum temperature, which occurred earlier than that of the average minimum temperature. Overall, the WH began later from east to west and was mainly concentrated in approximately 1998 and 2007. Both the ATC and the WH in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau area showed hysteresis. The ATC to WH period was between three and 27 years, and the earlier the ATC was, the longer was the period. Before the ATC, all three temperature parameters increased slightly. The average minimum temperature rose faster than the average temperature, and the average maximum temperature rose the slowest. Furthermore, the variation became more dramatic from southeast to northwest. After the ATC, the temperatures in most areas increased rapidly, and the rate of temperature increase increased with decreasing latitude. The average maximum temperature decreased in the area east of 100° E and south of 30° N. In this area, the rates of temperature increase for the average minimum and average temperatures were on a par with the rate of decrease in the absolute average maximum temperature, with the rates being three to five times greater than those before the ATC, but without dramatic variations. After the ATC, a CH did not occur at the stations where the temperature had decreased, whereas a WH occurred after a certain period of time at most of the stations where the temperature had increased. Moreover, such occurrences differed with latitude. A comparison of the temperature after the WH with that both before and after the ATC but before the WH revealed that the temperature did not vary dramatically. Eight to 10 years after the WH, the temperatures at a small number of stations in northern China rose again; however, due to the short length of the time series, it is impossible to determine whether the WH had truly ended. The results of the study enrich the findings of climate change research and provide a reference for addressing resource and environmental issues.

Adiabatic measurements, followed by feedback and erasure protocols, have often been considered as a model to embody Maxwell’s Demon paradox and to study the interplay between thermodynamics and information processing. Such studies have led to the conclusion, now widely accepted in the community, that Maxwell’s Demon and the second law of thermodynamics can peacefully coexist because any gain provided by the demon must be offset by the cost of performing the measurement and resetting the demon’s memory to its initial state. Statements of this kind are collectively referred to as second laws of information thermodynamics and have recently been extended to include quantum theoretical scenarios. However, previous studies in this direction have made several assumptions, particularly about the feedback process and the demon’s memory readout, and thus arrived at statements that are not universally applicable and whose range of validity is not clear. In this work, we fill this gap by precisely characterizing the full range of quantum feedback control and erasure protocols that are overall consistent with the second law of thermodynamics. This leads us to conclude that the second law of information thermodynamics is indeed universal: it must hold for any quantum feedback control and erasure protocol, regardless of the measurement process involved, as long as the protocol is overall compatible with thermodynamics. Our comprehensive analysis not only encompasses new scenarios but also retrieves previous ones, doing so with fewer assumptions. This simplification contributes to a clearer understanding of the theory.

Climate variability presents novel challenges to the conservation of maritime cultural and natural heritage. In the south Kenya coast, responses to extreme temperatures and sudden onset high rainfall worsen the condition of historic buildings and sacred landscapes, putting maritime communities at risk. To provide a baseline for prioritizing conservation planning initiatives, the paper sought to establish climate variability for the adaptation of maritime heritage to climate change. Between 1994 and 2024, average maximum and minimum temperatures rose by +1.6°C and +1.4°C, respectively. Linear regressions of average maximum and minimum temperatures showed high extremes of 32.10°C to 32.40°C and low extremes of 19.8°C to 20°C, respectively. The leptokurtic distribution showed a substantial chance of severe outcomes in average minimum and maximum temperatures in September and November, respectively. Over 30 years, the average maximum rainfall increased by 190mm with linear regressions indicating high extremes between 1500mm and 1600mm. The leptokurtic distribution revealed a substantial chance of extreme outcomes in average maximum rainfall in November. Average maximum and minimum temperatures for the final two years were considerably higher than the first two years; t (-5.2086, 1.0000) = 6.3138, P=0.0604) and t (--3.7226, 1.0000) = 6.3138, P=0.0835). However, average mean rainfall over the first two years was significantly lower than that over the latter two years t (-0.525, 1.000) = 6.3138, P =0.3460). Overall, unpredictability of short and long rainy seasons has increased during the last ten years compared to the previous twenty. Conservation planning is to consider physical stabilizations, shoreline consolidation, mangrove restoration, land use control, adjustments of setbacks and buffer zones to adapt maritime heritage to climate change.

4 - The Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics: Entropy

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between meteorological factors and the occurrence of acute aortic dissection (AAD) in Fujian Province, China.MethodsThe clinical data of 2004 patients diagnosed with AAD in our hospital and the relevant local meteorological data from January 2013 to November 2019 were retrospectively analyzed.ResultsThe incidence of AAD had a clear tendency toward concentration, and the corresponding peak in terms of the occurrence date was from January 13 to 14. The average minimum temperature, the average maximum temperature, and the average daily temperature differences on the “day with AAD” were significantly lower than those on the “day without AAD”. From 5 days to 3 days before AAD onset, the average daily temperature difference showed a downward trend, but statistical analysis showed that the average minimum, average maximum and average daily temperature differences were not significantly different from the values 5 days to 0 days before AAD onset.ConclusionsThe incidence of AAD is related to the season and month. The lowest average temperature may increase the incidence of AAD in patients with complicated cardiovascular diseases.

The status of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, even in the 21st century, is not as certain as when Arthur Eddington wrote about it a hundred years ago. It is not only about the truth of this law, but rather about its strict and exhaustive formulation. In the previous article, it was shown that two of the three most famous thermodynamic formulations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are non-exhaustive. However, the status of the statistical approach, contrary to common and unfounded opinions, is even more difficult. It is known that Boltzmann did not manage to completely and correctly derive the Second Law of Thermodynamics from statistical mechanics, even though he probably did everything he could in this regard. In particular, he introduced molecular chaos into the extension of the Liouville equation, obtaining the Boltzmann equation. By using the H theorem, Boltzmann transferred the Second Law of Thermodynamics thesis to the molecular chaos hypothesis, which is not considered to be fully true. Therefore, the authors present a detailed and critical review of the issue of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and entropy from the perspective of phenomenological thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, as well as kinetic theory. On this basis, Propositions 1-3 for the statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are formulated in the original part of the article. Proposition 1 is based on resolving the misunderstanding of the Perpetuum Mobile of the Second Kind by introducing the Perpetuum Mobile of the Third Kind. Proposition 2 specifies the structure of allowed thermodynamic processes by using the Inequality of Heat and Temperature Proportions inspired by Eudoxus of Cnidus's inequalities defining real numbers. Proposition 3 is a Probabilistic Scheme of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that, like a game, shows the statistical tendency for entropy to increase, even though the possibility of it decreasing cannot be completely ruled out. Proposition 3 is, in some sense, free from Loschmidt's irreversibility paradox.

In continuum physics, constitutive equations model the material properties of physical systems. In those equations, material symmetry is taken into account by applying suitable representation theorems for symmetric and/or isotropic functions. Such mathematical representations must be in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, which imposes that, in any thermodynamic process, the entropy production must be nonnegative. This requirement is fulfilled by assigning the constitutive equations in a form that guaranties that second law of thermodynamics is satisfied along arbitrary processes. Such an approach, in practice regards the second law of thermodynamics as a restriction on the constitutive equations, which must guarantee that any solution of the balance laws also satisfy the entropy inequality. This is a useful operative assumption, but not a consequence of general physical laws. Indeed, a different point of view, which regards the second law of thermodynamics as a restriction on the thermodynamic processes, i.e., on the solutions of the system of balance laws, is possible. This is tantamount to assuming that there are solutions of the balance laws that satisfy the entropy inequality, and solutions that do not satisfy it. In order to decide what is the correct approach, Muschik and Ehrentraut in 1996, postulated an amendment to the second law, which makes explicit the evident (but rather hidden) assumption that, in any point of the body, the entropy production is zero if, and only if, this point is a thermodynamic equilibrium. Then they proved that, given the amendment, the second law of thermodynamics is necessarily a restriction on the constitutive equations and not on the thermodynamic processes. In the present paper, we revisit their proof, lighting up some geometric aspects that were hidden in therein. Moreover, we propose an alternative formulation of the second law of thermodynamics, which incorporates the amendment. In this way we make this important result more intuitive and easily accessible to a wider audience.

We have considered that the universe is the inhomogeneous (n+2)-dimensional quasi-spherical Szekeres space-time model. We consider the universe as a thermodynamical system with the horizon surface as a boundary of the system. To study the generalized second law (GSL) of thermodynamics through the universe, we have assumed the trapped surface is the apparent horizon. Next we have examined the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics on the apparent horizon by two approaches: i) using the first law of thermodynamics on the apparent horizon and ii) without using the first law. In the first approach, the horizon entropy has been calculated by the first law. In the second approach, first we have calculated the surface gravity and temperature on the apparent horizon and then the horizon entropy has been found from the area formula. The variation of internal entropy has been found by Gibb's law. Using these two approaches separately, we find the conditions for validity of GSL in the (n+2)-dimensional quasi-spherical Szekeres model.

In this work, we have considered a non-canonical scalar field dark energy model in the framework of flat FRW background. It has also been assumed that the dark matter sector interacts with the non-canonical dark energy sector through some interaction term. Using the solutions for this interacting non-canonical scalar field dark energy model, we have investigated the validity of generalized second law (GSL) of thermodynamics in various scenarios using first law and area law of thermodynamics. For this purpose, we have assumed two types of horizons viz apparent horizon and event horizon for the universe and using first law of thermodynamics, we have examined the validity of GSL on both apparent and event horizons. Next, we have considered two types of entropy-corrections on apparent and event horizons. Using the modified area law, we have examined the validity of GSL of thermodynamics on apparent and event horizons under some restrictions of model parameters.

Here, we investigate the growth of matter density perturbations as well as the generalized second law (GSL) of thermodynamics in the framework of f(R)-gravity. We consider a spatially flat FRW universe filled with the pressureless matter and radiation which is enclosed by the dynamical apparent horizon with the Hawking temperature. For some viable f(R) models containing the Starobinsky, Hu-Sawicki, Exponential, Tsujikawa and AB models, we first explore numerically the evolution of some cosmological parameters like the Hubble parameter, the Ricci scalar, the deceleration parameter, the density parameters and the equation of state parameters. Then, we examine the validity of GSL and obtain the growth factor of structure formation. We find that for the aforementioned models, the GSL is satisfied from the early times to the present epoch. But in the farther future, the GSL for the all models is violated. Our numerical results also show that for

The inter-annual and inter-decadal variation of temperature in Dabie Mountain of West Anhui Province is analyzed according to actually measured data of daily average temperature, maximum temperature and minimum temperature during 1960-2013 in five meteorological stations in Dabie Mountain. Results show: The quarterly and annual average temperature, average maximum temperature and average minimum temperature (except the average maximum temperature in summer) in Dabie Mountain of West Anhui Province are all in a rising tendency. The annual average temperature increases remarkably at an amplitude of 0.165°C/10 years. The increase amplitude of average minimum temperature is 1-2 times of the average maximum temperature, and the daily range shows obvious reduction. The annual extremely maximum temperature and extremely minimum temperature are both on the rise, and the amplitude of the latter is larger than that of the former. From 1960s, the average temperature, average maximum temperature and average minimum temperature turned rising in Dabie Mountain of West Anhui Province. The abnormally warm years are 1967, 1968, 206, 207, 1998 and 2013, while the abnormally cold years are 1967 and 1981.

Exergization

Güneybatı Anadolu’da yer alan ve 13.338 km2 yüzölçüme sahip olan Muğla ili, genelde dağlık ve engebeli bir araziye sahiptir. Bu çalışmada Muğla ilinin aylık ve yıllık maksimum ve minimum ortalama sıcaklık değerlerinin Ters Mesafe Ağırlıklı (IDW) enterpolasyon yöntemiyle dağılışlarının haritalanıp analiz edilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Bunun için Meteoroloji Genel Müdürlüğü’nün Muğla ilinden 13 istasyonu ve ilin sınırlarına yakın olan Gölhisar, Bozdoğan, Kaş, Elmalı istasyonlarının meteoroloji verileri kullanılmıştır. Bu istasyonların yıllık ve aylık ortalama maksimum ve minimum sıcaklıkları değerleri, Coğrafi Bilgi Sistemleri (CBS) yardımıyla ArcGIS ortamına aktarılıp IDW yöntemiyle dağılışları haritalanmıştır. Bu haritalara göre Muğla’da yıllık maksimum ortalama sıcaklıkların en yüksek olduğu yer Milas ve çevresi iken en düşük olduğu yerler Muğla merkez ve Seydikemer ilçesinin kuzeydoğusundaki il sınırlarıdır. Bu iki yeri, uzun bir yarımadada yer alan Datça ilçesi takip eder. Yıllık minimum ortalama sıcaklıkların en yüksek olduğu yerler ise Datça ve Marmaris ilçeleri çevresi iken en düşük olduğu yerler Kavaklıdere ve Seydikemer’in kuzeydoğusundaki Burdur il sınırıdır. İlde maksimum ortalama sıcaklığın en yükseğe çıktığı ay temmuz (Milas ve Köyceğiz’de 41,6-41,1°C arasında), en düşük değerlere indiği ay ocak (Muğla merkez ve Kavaklıdere’de 14-17°C arasında) ayıdır. İlde minimum ortalama sıcaklıkların en yükseğe çıktığı ay haziran (Marmaris’te 37,7-34,6°C arasında), en düşük değerlere indiği ay ise ocak (Kavaklıdere’de -7,9 ile -6,6°C arasında) ayıdır. Yükselti koşulları, denizellik etki derecesi ve bakı koşulları ile özellikle yazın etkisini hissettiren termik basınç alanlarının buralara kadar sokulması ilde maksimum ve minimum ortalama sıcaklık değerlerinin dağılışında etkili olmuştur. Bu değerler, yıl içinde zamana bağlı olarak da değişkenlik gösterebilmektedir.

The purpose of the article is to analyze dynamics of the temperature regime of the surface layer of the atmosphere in the coastal zone of the North Atlantic as an indicator of changes in the thermohaline circulation system. In carrying out the research, comparative-geographical and historical statistical methods of the analysis of meteorological series were used. For research, 20 control points of the eastern part of the United States and Western Europe, which are located along the flow course of the Gulf Stream, are selected. In the selected points, by means of the linear trend method, the regularities of the dynamics of the mean annual, average maximum and average minimum temperatures of the atmospheric surface layer for the period from 1973 to 2013 have been established. The results of the study showed that, contrary to the hypothesis of fall in temperature in Europe, an increase in average annual and average maximum temperatures is observed in all control points of the region - the range means the linear trend is from 0.9 to 4.4 o F and from 0.3 to 3.8 o F respectively. In most US control points, the average annual temperature rises from 0.1 to 3 o F and the average maximum temperature rises from 0.2 to 2.1 oF. For four points of the United States the decrease in the values of the linear trend of average annual temperatures is from -0.4 to -1.2 o F; for three points - a decrease in average maximum temperatures is from -1.3 to -1.9 o F. At 9 control points in the USA and 8 control points in Europe, the average values of the minimum temperatures in the research period increased - in the USA, from 0.1 to 3.1 o F; in Europe from 0.3 to 4.6 o F. The opposite dynamics in the regions is observed for the values of the temperature amplitude. In most control points in Europe, the difference between the average maximum and the average minimum annual temperatures ranged from 0.4 to 6.6 o F; in most US destinations, on the contrary, a decrease in the amplitude value from -1.6 to -3 oF is observed. The analysis of the temperature dynamics of the surface layer of the atmosphere indicates the prevailing warming processes in the coastalzone of the North Atlantic, more intense for control points in Western Europe. The obtained data give grounds for refuting hypotheses of the presence of critical deviations in the thermohaline circulation system of the Atlantic Ocean, which could lead to a cooling in the Northern Hemisphere. The change in the amplitude values is a manifestation of increasing instability of the climate, which is likely to remain in the future with a general increase in the mean annual temperature in the region.

The relationship of an increase in fowl cholera outbreaks in turkeys with an increase in environmental temperatures during June, July, August, and September between 1959 and 1992 was analyzed. High environmental temperatures were found to be influential in the development of fowl cholera in turkeys. When the average monthly maximum environmental temperatures for 5 mo of July and 7 mo of August during the 13 yr between 1967 and 1979 were above 30.5 C, there was a significantly (P < 0.05) higher number of fowl cholera outbreaks in turkeys for each month than during the same months when the average maximum temperatures were below 30.5 C. To test the hypothesis that an increase in fowl cholera outbreaks was preceded by an increase in temperature, the pre- and postoutbreak temperatures for 46 selected outbreak clusters occurring between 1959 and 1992 were averaged. Both the average maximum and minimum temperatures for the latter 9 days of the preoutbreak period were highly significantly (P < 0.001) higher than those of the average cluster outbreak day and the following four postoutbreak days. Also, for the nine individual days of the latter pre-outbreak period, the daily average maximum temperature was significantly (P < 0.05) higher for 3 days and partially significantly (P < 0.10) higher for 3 days than that of the average cluster outbreak day, and the daily average minimum temperature was significantly (P < 0.05) higher for 2 days and partially significantly (P < 0.10) higher for 1 day than that for the average cluster outbreak day.