Exergy in meteorology: Definition and properties of moist available enthalpy.

International audienceThe exergy of the dry atmosphere can be considered as another aspect of the meteorological theories of available energies. The local and global properties of the dry available enthalpy function, also called flow exergy, were investigated in a previous paper. The concept of exergy is well defined in thermodynamics, and several generalizations to chemically reacting systems have already been made. Similarly, the concept of moist available enthalpy is presented in this paper in order to generalize the dry available enthalpy to the case of a moist atmosphere. It is a local exergy-like function which possesses a simple analytical expression where only two unknown constants are to be determined, a reference temperature and a reference pressure. The moist available enthalpy a_m is defined in terms of a moist potential change in total entropy. The local function a_m can be separated into temperature, pressure and latent components. The latent component is a new component that is not present in the dry case. The moist terms have been estimated using a representative cumulus vertical profile. It appears that the modifications brought by the moist formulation are important in comparison with the dry case. Other local and global properties are also investigated and comparisons are made with some other available energy functions used in thermodynamics and meteorology