MaxEnt and MaxEP in Modeling Fractal Topography and Atmospheric Turbulence

Abstract

Recent investigations on scale-invariant processes such as topography and modeling evapotranspiration demonstrate the usefulness and potential of the principles of maximum entropy (MaxEnt) and maximum entropy production (MaxEP) in the study of Earth systems. MaxEnt allows theoretical predictions of probability distributions of geophysical multifractal processes based on a small number of geometric parameters. MaxEP leads to the prediction of evapotrans- piration and heat fluxes using fewer input variables than existing process based models. Encouraging progress in the application of MaxEnt and MaxEP, viewed as unified principles of inference, paves the way for more approaches of under- standing, characterizing and predicting the behavior of the complex Earth systems.