{"id":463904,"date":"2026-08-18T11:34:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T18:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=463904"},"modified":"2026-08-18T11:34:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T18:34:20","slug":"comparing-equilibrium-kinetic-and-non-equilibrium-temperatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=463904","title":{"rendered":"Comparing Equilibrium, Kinetic, and Non-Equilibrium Temperatures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Andy May Petrophysicist<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Andy May<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is part 3 of a series on defining temperature. In part one<\/a> I covered various temperature definitions used and pointed out that \u201ctemperature,\u201d unmodified is only a measurement of an emergent statistical property with little meaning beyond that. It is important in physics and daily life, but not a primitive well defined property like mass or energy. In part two<\/a> I covered kinetic temperature, which is \u201cwhat we measure with a thermometer\u201d (Schroeder, 2000). In the original X discussion<\/a> that spurred me to write these posts, some argued that the \u201creal\u201d definition of \u201ctemperature\u201d was the thermodynamic equilibrium temperature. Of course this is not true. For nearly everyone on Earth, thermometers measure temperature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a number of unique conditions required to measure a thermodynamic equilibrium temperature and a separate set of conditions to measure a kinetic (or thermometer) temperature, and they are not the same. While the kinetic temperature may be the same as the thermodynamic equilibrium temperature in a system at equilibrium, they are not the same thing. There is also another category of temperatures that are very different from kinetic or thermodynamic temperatures, called non-equilibrium temperatures. Non-equilibrium temperatures do not meet all the conditions required for kinetic and thermodynamic temperatures. Examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n