2005 Volume 60 Issue 11 Pages 867-871
The world's ocean can be seen as an open dissipative system connected with its surroundings by the exchange fluxes of heat and freshwater. Two ideas have been proposed to explain the stability of the open dissipative system : the principle of minimum entropy production and the principle of maximum entropy production (MEP). It can be considered that MEP is valid for a highly nonlinear and non-equilibrium system such as the ocean system. We showed by numerical simulations that irreversible transitions to a state with higher entropy production occur in the ocean system and support MEP.