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Title: Reply to “What Is the Maximum Entropy Principle? Comments on ‘Statistical Theory on the Functional Form of Cloud Particle Size Distributions’”

Journal Article · · Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
ORCiD logo [1];  [2]
  1. Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
  2. Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, and School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma

We welcome the opportunity to correct the misunderstandings and misinterpretations contained in Yano’s comment that led him to incorrectly state that Wu and McFarquhar misunderstood the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) principle. As correctly stated by Yano, the principle itself does not suffer from the problem of a lack of invariance. But, as restated in this reply and in Wu and McFarquhar, the commonly used Shannon–Gibbs entropy does suffer from a lack of invariance for coordinate transform when applied in continuous cases, and this problem is resolved by the use of the relative entropy. Further, it is restated that the Wu and McFarquhar derivation of the PSD form using MaxEnt is more general than the formulation by Yano and allows more constraints with any functional relations to be applied. We state the derivation of Yano is nothing new but the representation of PSDs in other variables.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK (United States); University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0014065; SC0016476; AGS-1213311; AGS-1762096
OSTI ID:
1576870
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1593780
Journal Information:
Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Journal Name: Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences Vol. 76 Journal Issue: 12; ISSN 0022-4928
Publisher:
American Meteorological SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (12)

Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics journal May 1957
On the size distribution of cloud droplets journal January 1995
A maximum entropy approach to the problem of parametrization: A Maximum Entropy Approach to Parametrization journal July 2011
Energy and Enstrophy Spectra of Geostrophic Turbulent Flows Derived from a Maximum Entropy Principle journal August 2009
What Is the Maximum Entropy Principle? Comments on “Statistical Theory on the Functional Form of Cloud Particle Size Distributions” journal December 2019
Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics. II journal October 1957
Prior Probabilities journal January 1968
Statistical Theory on the Functional Form of Cloud Particle Size Distributions journal August 2018
A maximum entropy approach to the parametrization of subgrid processes in two‐dimensional flow
  • Verkley, W. T. M.; Kalverla, P. C.; Severijns, C. A.
  • Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 142, Issue 699 https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.2817
journal May 2016
A simple droplet spectrum derived from entropy theory journal May 1994
Applications of the principle of maximum entropy: from physics to ecology journal January 2010
Size Distributions of Hydrometeors: Analysis with the Maximum Entropy Principle journal January 2016

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