Rainer Feistel

Verified

Rainer verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Rainer verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• Dr. rer. nat. habil.
• Emeritus Senior Researcher at Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research

An important property of aqueous solutions is pH because it affects chemical and biochemical properties such as chemical reactions, equilibrium conditions, and biological toxicity. With the increasing uptake of fossil fuel CO2 into the oceans, a decrease in pH is important to consider at this time. Unfortunately, many different methods for assessin...

Various thermodynamic equilibrium properties of naturally abundant, hexagonal ice ice Ih of water (H 2 O) have been used to develop a Gibbs energy function g(T, p) of temperature and pressure, covering the ranges 0–273.16 K and 0 Pa–210 MPa, expressed in the temperature scale ITS-90. It serves as a fundamental equation from which addi-tional proper...

This document describes the International Thermodynamic Equation Of Seawater – 2010 (TEOS-10 for short). TEOS-­10 defines the thermodynamic properties of seawater and of ice Ih and has been adopted by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission at its 25th Assembly in June 2009, replacing EOS-­80 as the official description of seawater and ice p...

Fundamental determinations of the physical properties of seawater have previously been made for Atlantic surface waters, referred to as “Standard Seawater”. In this paper a Reference Composition consisting of the major components of Atlantic surface seawater is determined using these earlier analytical measurements. The stoichiometry of sea salt in...

This thoroughly updated version of the German authoritative work on self-organization has been completely rewritten by internationally renowned experts and experienced book authors to also include a review of more recent literature. It retains the original enthusiasm and fascination surrounding thermodynamic systems far from equilibrium, synergetic...

In this paper, the term childhood denotes the ontogenetic developmental stage of weaned mammal infants who are still helpless and need to be nurtured and protected for survival. Human infants have a pronounced childhood phase in contrast to great apes. For a hominin model scenario proposed here, it will be argued that upright bipedal locomotion fac...

Certifies rank #7 in international seawater research

The origin of life has previously been subject to numerous studies and hypotheses. Typically, related models focus on the emergence of chemical networks such as the RNA world or the Krebs energy cycle. Here, the onset of life is described as a symmetry-breaking kinetic phase transition. The novel symmetry of life is the arbitrariness of code that i...

Unpredicted observations in the climate system, such as recent excessive ocean warming, are often lacking immediate causal explanations and are challenging numerical models. As a highly advanced mathematical tool, the Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater – 2010 (TEOS-10) was established by international bodies as an interdisciplinary standard and is...

The origin of life has previously been subject to numerous studies and hypotheses. Typically, related models focus on the emergence of chemical networks such as the RNA world or the Krebs energy cycle. Here, the onset of life is described as a symmetry-breaking kinetic phase transition of the II. kind. The novel symmetry of life is the arbitrarines...

A sign error has been found in Equation (32) of the paper: Feistel, R.; Hellmuth, O. Irreversible Thermodynamics of Seawater Evaporation. J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2024, 12, 166.

Climate is changing: the world is getting warmer. Of the mean solar energy flux of 240 W m-2 , a fraction of 0.5 W m-2 remains permanently stored: in the ocean, 89 % of that, 6 % on land, 4 % melt the ice cover, and only 1 % of it heats up the atmosphere; just this bit is publicly recognised from weather forecasts. Climate models estimate the air-s...

Abstract: Climate is changing: the world is getting warmer. Of the mean solar energy flux of 240 W m–2, a fraction of 0.5 W m–2 remains permanently stored: in the ocean, 89 % of that, 6 % on land, 4 % melt the ice cover, and only 1 % of it heats up the atmosphere; just this bit is publicly recognised from weather forecasts. Climate models estimate...

At an energy flux imbalance of about 1 W m-2 , the ocean stores 90% of the heat accumulating by global warming. However, neither the causes of this nor the responsible geophysical processes are sufficiently well understood. More detailed investigations of the different phenomena contributing to the oceanic energy balance are warranted. Here, the ro...

Abstract: Unpredicted observations in the climate system, such as recently an excessive ocean warming, are often lacking immediate causal explanations and are challenging the numerical models. As a highly advanced mathematical tool, the Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater – 2010 (TEOS-10) had been established by international bodies as an interdisci...

At an energy flux imbalance of about 1 W m–2, the ocean is storing 90 % of the heat accumulating by global warming. However, neither the causes nor the responsible geophysical processes are sufficiently well understood. More detailed investigations of the different phenomena contributing to the oceanic energy balance are warranted. Here, the role o...

Self-Organisation of Prediction Models by Rainer Feistel Abstract Living organisms are active open systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. The ability to behave actively corresponds to dynamical metastability: minor but supercritical internal or external effects may trigger major substantial actions such as gross mechanical motion, dissipating...

Under typical marine conditions of about 80% relative humidity, evaporation of water from the ocean is an irreversible process accompanied by entropy production. In this article, equations are derived for the latent heat of irreversible evaporation and the related nonequilibrium entropy balance at the sea surface. To achieve this, linear irreversib...

A thermodynamic potential is derived for seawater as a function of Conservative Temperature, Absolute Salinity and pressure. From this thermodynamic potential, all the equilibrium thermodynamic properties of seawater can be found, just as all these thermodynamic properties can be found from the TEOS-10 (the International Thermodynamic Equation of S...

Empirical equations representing, interpolating and smoothing groups of measurement results by regression methods are in widespread use in metrology and other fields of science and engineering. Standard equations for the propagation of measurement uncertainties to values computed from such equations are available but suffer from a lack of general a...

Living organisms are active open systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. The ability to behave actively corresponds to dynamical metastability: minor but supercritical internal or external effects may trigger major substantial actions such as gross mechanical motion, dissipating internally accumulated energy reserves. Gaining a selective advant...

Living organisms are active open systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. The ability to behave actively corresponds to dynamical metastability: minor but supercritical internal or external effects may trigger major substantial actions such as gross mechanical motion, dissipating internally accumulated energy reserves. Gaining selective advantag...

Under typical marine conditions of about 80 % relative humidity, evaporation of water from the ocean is an irreversible process accompanied by entropy production. In this article, equations are derived for the latent heat of irreversible evaporation and the related non-equilibrium entropy balance at the sea surface. To achieve this, linear irrevers...

We analyze the efficiency of conversions between different forms of energy as mechanical, chemical, thermal and electrical energy in the context of climatic change and suggest useful strategies. Further we discuss the possible consequences of human energy consumption and of several industrial processes for the further evolution of the world climate...

A thermodynamic potential is found for seawater as a function of Conservative Temperature, Absolute Salinity and pressure. From this thermodynamic potential, all the equilibrium thermodynamic properties of seawater can be derived, just as all these thermodynamic properties can be found from the TEOS-10 Gibbs function (which is a function of in situ...

Under typical marine conditions of about 80 % relative humidity, evaporation of water from the ocean is an irreversible process accompanied by entropy production. In this Short Note, equations are derived for the latent heat of irreversible evaporation and the related non-equilibrium entropy balance at the sea surface. The estimated entropy product...

Abstract The ability of predicting upcoming events or conditions in advance offers substantial selective advantage to living beings. The most successful systematic tool for fairly reliable prognoses is the use of dynamical causal models in combination with memorised experience. Surprisingly, causality is a fundamental but rather controversially dis...

Adopted by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO in 2010 and the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) in 2011, the Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater 2010 (TEOS-10) is the current geophysical standard for the thermodynamic properties of humid air, seawater and ice. TEOS-10 equations for evaporation and subli...

The ability of predicting upcoming events or conditions in advance offers substantial selective advantage to living beings. The most successful systematic tool for fairly reliable prognoses is the use of dynamical causal models in combination with memorised experience. Surprisingly, causality is a fundamental but rather controversially disputed con...

In 1932 Onsager and Fouss found in a seminal work that the the conductivity of mixtures of electrolytes depends on specific mixture effects which may be calculated by means of a matrix theory. Here we formulate the matrix theory of conductivity for seawater. We solve that problem of seawater conductivity for a 6 - component model and show numerical...

Relative humidity (RH) is a fundamental quantity used in many fields of engineering and science, and in particular in meteorology and climate research. Relative fugacity (RF) and, equivalently, relative activity of water vapour in humid air have recently been proposed as a physically well-founded, unambiguous common metrological reference quantity...

This work ibased on the manuscript EbFeGrJSC21g is related to an earlier preprint EbFeGrJSC21e. We are extending here the Onsager -Fuoss theory of the conductivity of electrolytic mixture to a 6 - component model od seawater. The matrix problem is solved by numerical computations using a free software. It is shown that the mean mobility approximati...

The differences between one classical and three state-of-the-art formulations of the mass density of humid air were quantified. Here, we present both the calculi for direct determination of the humid-air mass density employing the virial form of the thermodynamic equation of state, and a sufficiently accurate look-up-table for the quick-look determ...

The letter explains why life invented symbols in the course of evolution

Based on methods of statistical mechanics for the calculation of individual activity coefficients for electrolytic solutions we present analytical nonlinear extensions of the standard Debye - Hückel and Mean-Spherical approximations. These extensions, so - called DHX and MSX approximations, respectively, generalize the exact results from cluster th...

In the words of Heinrich Hertz in 1885, the Earth is a “gigantic steam engine”. On average, of the planet’s cross section exposed to sunlight, 72 % belong to the global ocean. With a delay of only 2-3 months, most of the heat absorbed there is released by evaporation rather than by thermal radiation. Water vapour is the dominating “greenhouse gas”...

In this work which is an update of the previous RG - manuscript (part II) we extend transport theory of individual electrical conductivities. We discuss the higher orders in the interaction strenght and in the screening parameters adding further terms which improve the agreement with experimantal data. In particular we inprove the account of bound...

Access via Twitter and LinkedIn

The influence of long, sub-inertial waves travelling poleward on spatiotemporal fluctuations in the hydrography of coastal upwelling areas has widely been discussed theoretically in the literature since the late 1970s. In this paper, in contrast, measured unexpected wave-like changes in the intermediate density field along the Namibian continental...

In the words of Heinrich Hertz in 1885, the Earth is a "gigantic steam engine". On average, of the planet's cross section exposed to sunlight, 72 % belong to the global ocean. With a delay of only 2-3 months, most of the heat absorbed there is released by evaporation rather than by thermal radiation. Water vapour is the dominating "greenhouse gas"...

Sitzungsberichte der Leibniz-Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 144 (2020) 51-139, https://leibnizsozietaet.de/publikationen/sitzungsberichte/ Zusammenfassung: In den Worten Heinrich Hertz‘ von 1885 ist die Erde eine „gigantische Dampfmaschine“. Im Mittel gehören 72 % des von der Sonne beschienenen Erdquerschnitts zum globalen Ozean. Mit einer...

So far, individual activity coefficients of ions could not be measured directly in electrochemical experiments. Their knowledge is important, however, for the solution of various physical chemical problems, and is particularly of high relevance for understanding and estimating the pH of seawater and related climatological studies. In this paper we...

As newly developed statistical methods for the calculation of individual activity coefficients for electrolytic solutions we present fully analytical nonlinear extensions of the standard Debye-Hückel and Mean Spherical approximations. These extensions, so-called DHX-and MSX-approximations for the model of non-additive charged spheres, generalize th...

Subcooled water is the primordial matrix for ice embryo formation by homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation. The knowledge of the specific Gibbs free energy and other thermodynamic quantities of subcooled water is one of the basic prerequisites of the theoretical analysis of ice crystallization in terms of classical nucleation theory. The most ad...

Based on statistical methods to calculate individual activity coefficients of ions in electrolyte solutions developed in parts I and II, we present here applications to two simplified seawater models (SWM 2+ and SWM 6+). As in the foregoing parts we start with exact results for the model of hard charged spheres (non-additive radii) obtained from th...

Abstract: In the words of Heinrich Hertz (1885), planet Earth is a “gigantic steam engine”. Of the cross section exposed to sunlight, an average of 72 % belongs to the global ocean. After a relaxation time of only 2-3 months, heat absorbed there is exported mainly by evaporation rather than thermal radiation. Water vapour is the dominating “greenho...

A recently developed thermodynamic theory for the determination of the driving force of crystallization and the crystal–melt surface tension is applied to the ice-water system employing the new Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater TEOS-10. The deviations of approximative formulations of the driving force and the surface tension from the exact referen...

In the context of the recent oceanographic standard TEOS-10, the Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater – 2010, a new Reference-Composition Salinity Scale was introduced in 2008. For IAPSO Standard Seawater, values of this Reference Salinity are related to 1978 Practical Salinity by a definite factor, however, regional seawater samples may deviate from...

The recent international seawater standard TEOS-10 supports the investigation of absolute salinities in the oceans. With respect to TEOS-10, anomalies in the salinity-density relation of samples from the eastern central Atlantic were observed which had been unexpected for the region and have not been reported before. Our findings are similar in mag...

A recently developed thermodynamic theory for the determination of the driving force of crystallization and the crystal–melt surface tension is applied to the ice–water system employing the new Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater TEOS-10. The deviations of approximative formulations of the driving force and the surface tension from the exact referen...

Based on a previous survey of statistical methods to calculate individual activity coefficients of ions in electrolyte solutions (part I, authored with Hartmut Krienke), we present here applications to several components of seawater such as NaCl, KCl and MgCl 2 , MgSO 4 , CaCl 2 , CaSO 4 and Na 2 SO 4. We investigate these components individually,...

Using an osmotic-pressure cell, the relative fugacity of a sample of humid air can be determined: (i) From measurements of T and p only, traceable to the SI (ii) Using equations of state of liquid water, water vapour and ice Ih (iii) Correcting for the solubility of air in liquid water (iv) Without knowledge of the sample‘s water content (v) Withou...

In conventional textbook thermodynamics, entropy is a quantity that may be calculated by different methods, for example experimentally from heat capacities (following Clausius) or statistically from numbers of microscopic quantum states (following Boltzmann and Planck). It had turned out that these methods do not necessarily provide mutually consis...

In the first part of this work we provide a survey of several methods to estimate the individual activity coefficients of ions in electrolyte solutions in the light of statistical theory. In particular we discuss statistical methods based on the model of hard charged spheres and other simple ionic interaction potentials, such as the Debye-Hückel ap...

We study here the old problem of individual activity coefficients in the light of statistical theory. Several methods are proposed for the estimation of theoretical individual ionic activity coefficients using he model of hard charged spheres and other simple potentials on the basis of virial expansions, DHX-approximations, the analytical solution...

Relative fugacity (RF), or relative activity, of water in humid air has recently been suggested as a real-gas generalisation for relative humidity, the latter being conventionally defined as a ratio of partial pressures of water vapour. The RF definition covers the entire temperature-pressure region below the critical point of water, where humid ai...

Prof. Werner Ebeling and Rainer Feistel (Germany) understand selforganization as the opposite of normal processes, which show a tendency to dissipate energy, the growth of chaos. As a necessary condition, selforganization requires a supercritical distance from the thermodynamic equilibrium and the provision of high-quality energy. Evolution is a ch...

Previous cloud chamber experiments on freezing of supercooled cloud droplets with single immersed, size-selected 400 nm and 800 nm kaolinite particles revealed a sigmoidal increase of the fraction of frozen cloud droplets with decreasing temperature in the range from 243 to 236 K. Assuming uniformity of the particle composition and horizontal homog...

In the terrestrial climate system, water is a key player in the form of its different ambient phases of ice, liquid and vapour, admixed with sea salt in the ocean and with dry air in the atmosphere. For proper balances of climatic energy and entropy fluxes in models and observations, a highly accurate, consistent and comprehensive thermodynamic sta...

The Knudsen theorem for estuarine exchange flow, based on mass conservation of water and salt, and its generalization with resolution in salinity coordinates, the Total Exchange Flow (TEF) analysis framework, are reviewed here. The former had been developed, and applied to quantify exchange flow between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, more than a...

We discuss here concepts for the origin of life and information processing based on phenotypic selective valuation. The emergence of life is suggested to be associated with the emergence of symbolic genetic information. The key order parameter is fitness, or selective value in evolving biological system. As fitness cannot be computed from the eleme...

Inventor Stefan Feistel, Alexandru Radu Miron, Wolfgang Ahnert, Rainer Feistel. The invention relates to a process for determining an averaged frequency-dependent transfer function for a perturbed linear time-invariant system by means of an evaluation device, wherein the process comprises providing frequency-dependent reference signals derived from...

In the terrestrial climate system, water is a key player in the form of its different ambient phases of ice, liquid and vapour, admixed with sea salt in the ocean and with dry air in the atmosphere. For proper balances of climatic energy and entropy fluxes in models and observation, a highly accurate, consistent and comprehensive thermodynamic stan...

Generalized least-squares regression (GLS) is a method for representing scattered, possibly mutually correlated data. This method applies in particular to multi-property regression, where a common set of empirical coefficients is fitted to groups of datasets representing different quantities or having different origins. In this paper, a formula for...

In the terrestrial climate system, water is a key player in the form of its different ambient phases of ice, liquid and vapour, admixed with sea salt in the ocean and with dry air in the atmosphere. For proper balances of climatic energy and entropy fluxes in models and observation, a highly accurate, consistent and comprehensive thermodynamic stan...

In 1971, Manfred Eigen extended the principles of Darwinian evolution to chemical processes, from catalytic networks to the emergence of information processing at the molecular level, leading to the emergence of life. In this paper, we investigate some very general characteristics of this scenario, such as the valuation process of phenotypic traits...

The self-organization of information belongs to the basic topics of Haken’s synergetics. The basic statement of this paper is following Eigen and Haken-Krell that information is a product of evolution and: there is no information processing without life, and there is no life without information processing. The origin of information processing is ba...

It is shown how the ideas based on the concept of selforganization and the new discipline synergetics changed our views. First the basic priciples of selforganization and evolution are explained. Then we show in particular that these ideas played an important role in the social changes in East European countries at the end of the last century. In t...

The general theory of information, which includes syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and many other special theories of information, provides theoretical and practical tools for discerning a very large diversity of different kinds, types, and classes of information. Some of these kinds, types, and classes are more important and some are less important...

Empirical equations having large numbers of fitted parameters, such as the international standard reference equations published by the International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam (IAPWS), which form the basis of the “Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater—2010” (TEOS-10), provide the means to calculate many quantities very accuratel...

Method for determining an averaged frequency dependent transfer function for a distributed lti-system, evaluation unit and computer program. UK Patent EP10730695.3, Crown Copyright

Relative humidity (RH) is a quantity widely used in various fields such as metrology, meteorology, climatology or engineering. However, RH is neither uniformly defined, nor do some definitions properly account for deviations from ideal-gas properties, nor is the application range of interest fully covered. In this paper, a new full-range definition...

First we discuss some early work of Ulrike Feudel on structure formation in nonlinear reactions including ions and the efficiency of the conversion of chemical into electrical energy. Then we give some survey about energy conversion from chemical to higher forms of energy like mechanical, electrical and ecological energy. We consider examples of en...

First we discuss some early work of Ulrike Feudel on structure formation in nonlinear reactions including ions and the efficiency of the conversion of chemical into electrical energy. Then we give some survey about energy conversion from chemical to higher forms of energy like mechanical, electrical and ecological energy. We consider examples of en...

Metrologia: This is to certify that the article Metrological challenges for measurements of key climatological observables. Part 4: atmospheric relative humidity by J W Lovell-Smith, R Feistel, A H Harvey, O Hellmuth, S A Bell, M Heinonen and J R Cooper has been selected for inclusion in the ‘Highlights of 2016’ collection.

Structures play a crucial role in the world. They define things and thoughts, processes and functions, images and ideas. The goal of this research is to study structural information, which is intrinsically connected to structures. Here we present two approaches. In one of them, structural information is information in structures. In the other one,...

RH is neither uniformly defined, nor do some definitions properly account for deviations from ideal-gas properties, nor is the application range of interest fully covered. A new full-range definition of RH is proposed that is based on the thermodynamics of activities in order to include deviations from ideal-gas behaviour. Below the critical point...

Physically, information carriers are encountered in two occurrences, either in native form as physical structures, or in arbitrarily coded, symbolic form such as signal systems or sequences of signs. The symbolic form may rigorously be associated with the existence of life. In contrast, structural information may be present in various physical proc...

Salinity is a key variable in the modelling and observation of ocean circulation and ocean-atmosphere fluxes of heat and water. In this paper, we examine the climatological relevance of ocean salinity, noting fundamental deficiencies in the definition of this key observable, and its lack of a secure foundation on the International System of Units,...

Water in its three ambient phases plays the central thermodynamic role in the terrestrial climate system. Clouds control Earth’s radiation balance, atmospheric water vapour is the strongest “greenhouse” gas, and non-equilibrium relative humidity at the air-sea interface drives evaporation and latent heat export from the ocean. In this paper, we exa...

Water in its three ambient phases plays the central thermodynamic role in the terrestrial climate system. Clouds control Earth’s radiation balance, atmospheric water vapour is the strongest “greenhouse” gas, and non-equilibrium relative humidity at the air-sea interface drives evaporation and latent heat export from the ocean. In this paper, we exa...

Water dissolves many substances with which it comes into contact, leading to a variety of aqueous solutions ranging from simple and dilute to complex and highly concentrated. Of the multiple chemical species present in these solutions, the hydrogen ion, H+, stands out in importance due to its relevance to a variety of chemical reactions and equilib...

Wasser spielt die zentrale Rolle in der „Dampfmaschine Klima” unserer Erde. Wasserdampf dominiert den Treibhauseffekt der Atmosphäre, gefolgt von Wolken und Kohlendioxid (CO2). Verdunstung von der Meeresoberfläche ist der Hauptprozess des Energie-Exports aus dem Ozean, jedoch ist deren Transportrate nur im Rahmen einer Unsicherheit von 20 % bekannt...

Information is encountered in two different appearances, in native form by arbitrary physical structures, or in symbolic form by coded sequences of letters or the like. The self-organised emergence of symbolic information from structural information is referred to as a ritualisation transition. Occurring at some stage in evolutionary history, ritua...

Water plays the leading thermodynamic role in Earth’s “steam engine” climate. Followed by clouds and CO2, water vapour in the atmosphere is dominating the greenhouse effect. Evaporation from the ocean surface is the main route of energy export from the ocean, the rate of which is known with poor 20 % uncertainty only. Regional climatic trends in ev...

Eine persönliche Rückschau auf die Jahrzehnte gemeinsamer Arbeit aus Anlass des 80. Geburtstags von Werner Ebeling

The international oceanographic standard TEOS-10 [1] was adopted by UNESCO-IOC for all member states in 2009, and by IUGG in 2011. TEOS-10 makes reference to several IAPWS documents whose roles are described in this Advisory Note.

The International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam (IAPWS) has published a set of empirical reference equations of state, forming the basis of the 2010 Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater (TEOS-10), from which all thermodynamic properties of seawater, ice, and humid air can be derived in a thermodynamically consistent manner. For ea...

The Baltic Sea is a complex ecosystem characterized by a strongly fluctuating, fragile balance between high freshwater runoff and saline water inflows, a stable stratification and a topography composed of connected basins. The sensitivity of the system “Baltic Sea” amplifies climatological fluctuations on the decadal scale. Such changes may be irre...

Adam Smith, Charles Darwin, Rudolf Clausius, and Léon Brillouin considered certain “values” as key quantities in their descriptions of market competition, natural selection, thermodynamic processes, and information exchange, respectively. None of those values can be computed from elementary properties of the particular object they are attributed to...

Accepted manuscript version of: Virial Approximation of the TEOS-10 Equation for the Fugacity of Water in Humid Air, by Rainer Feistel · Jeremy W. Lovell-Smith · Olaf Hellmuth, Int J Thermophys (2015) 36:44–68, DOI 10.1007/s10765-014-1784-0