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Published March 2012 | public
Journal Article

Planetary Atmospheres as Nonequilibrium Condensed Matter

Marston, J. B.

Abstract

Planetary atmospheres, and models of them, are discussed from the viewpoint of condensed matter physics. Atmospheres are a form of condensed matter, and many of the most interesting concepts of condensed matter systems are realized by them. The essential physics of the general circulation is illustrated with idealized two-layer and one-layer models of the atmosphere. Equilibrium and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics are used to directly ascertain the statistics of these models.

Additional Information

© 2012 by Annual Reviews. First published online as a Review in Advance on November 14, 2011. I thank Freddy Bouchet, Kerry Emanuel, Grisha Falkovich, Paul Kushner, Paul O'Gorman, Glenn Paquette, Wanming Qi, Florian Sabou, Tapio Schneider, Steve Tobias, Peter Weichman, and Bill Young for helpful discussions. I would also like to thank Caltech for its hospitality during a sabbatical visit when this review was written, and Jim Langer for reading the review and offering helpful questions and suggestions. This work was supported in part by NSF grants DMR-0605619 and CCF-1048701. The definitions for key terms are adapted in part from the Glossary of Meteorology (104).

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023