This paper was written by the Australian atmospheric physicist Garth William Paltridge and published in 1975. The summary of this paper states: “It is found that the mean meridional distribution of temperature, cloud cover and meridional energy flux can be predicted with extraordinary accuracy by application of a simple minimum principle to a multibox model of the globe which contains no direct specification of the system dynamics. The minimized quantity is related to the global net rate of production of entropy. It is the sum over all latitude zones of the ratio of net radiant energy input to the effective emission temperature of the zone. The result suggests that global dynamics is something of a passive variable which alters so as to satisfy a condition akin to minimum energy dissipation.” Paltridge argues that a minimum entropy production principle, similar to the one outlined by Prigogine and Wiame (1946), guides the development of atmospheric systems. This paper was followed by papers in subsequent decades that focused on entropy production rather than power as a guide for the development of natural systems, and many of these later papers argued that this development was guided by the maximum entropy power principle; Paltridge wrote one himself in 2007. In that 2007 paper, he refers to this 1975 paper as developing a “maximum entropy production–based climate model.”
Paltridge, G. W. 1975. Global dynamics and climate?a system of minimum entropy exchange. Quarterly Journal of the Meteorological Society 104: 927-945. (doi: 10.1002/qj.49710444206)
Paltridge, G. W., G. D. Farquhar, and M. Cuntz. 2007. Maximum entropy production, cloud feedback, and climate change, Geophysical Research Letters (34) L14708.
Prigogine, I., & Wiame, J. M. 1946. Biologie et Thermodynamique des Phenomenes Irreversibles.
Exerientia, 2, 451–453.