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Post by guyfromhecker on Jun 12, 2018 16:42:36 GMT -6
Completely overlooked next to its star cousin CO2, water vapor stole the show early in the New Millennium when it dropped 10% and brought a halt to the ever-increasing temperatures. It moved back to where it was and it seems the temperatures started going up again. So exactly what is causing this temperature increase? Of course, it was right there in front of the authors, but it sure seems they tried to downplay water vapor once again, but fact is fact. When it dropped the increase stopped. It's a shame we don't have data for that like we have for every other greenhouse gas. How in the world can we say we have it figured out when the most important greenhouse gas is pretty much unaccounted for over time?
If you look at water vapor it can have a profound effect just changing by 5 or 10%. Pretty hard to overlook something like that, and this was only noted in the stratosphere. That doesn't take into account anything about the lower atmosphere where water vapor may play a larger part in Earth temperatures. I'll leave a link to the article later
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Post by guyfromhecker on Jun 12, 2018 18:08:06 GMT -6
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Post by guyfromhecker on Jun 13, 2018 15:39:43 GMT -6
Sorry I can only read the abstract, but they also mentioned an increase between 1980 and 2000. They do not detail that in the abstract. Think about this. At 0 degrees Celsius in absolute humidity saturation you would only have to go up 7% to reached 1 degree Celsius saturation. You think maybe we ought to pay a little bit more attention to water vapor? And the higher the temperature gets on strictly a percentile bases the smaller jump you have to make to move it one degrees Celsius. At 40 degrees Celsius the move to 41 is only 5% water vapor increase. Pretty touchy stuff I would say. That 10% in the stratosphere was probably from a pretty low number also because they're just think that much moisture out there. The percentile change is higher as you go to colder temperatures. It takes a 10% change to move from -40 to -39 Celsius. But that is 10% of very little.
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Post by guyfromhecker on Jun 13, 2018 15:43:12 GMT -6
It's been well noted lately that we just don't see record low temperatures anymore. It's not like we're seeing a bunch of record high temperatures either. Wouldn't a higher average dew point account for that?
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Post by guyfromhecker on Jun 13, 2018 15:49:12 GMT -6
The apologist view is well CO2 caused the dewpoint to go up. Well, then why did it suddenly drop. I've said it before and I'll say it again. CO2 has been given way more credit than it is due in this process. They seem to want to give the credit to all these things they can easily measure in parts per million. If it's hard to measure they just ignore it. You might be missing the big picture that way
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Post by bdgwx on Jun 17, 2018 16:22:31 GMT -6
There is a lot of inertia in the climate system predominately as a result of the uptake of heat in the ocean. The ocean accounts for 93% of the total heat uptake while the land, atmosphere, and ice account for the remaining 7%. The inertial lag between ocean heat uptake and atmospheric response is approximately 30 years for the first 500-1000m of ocean depth. That means periods of counter-intuitive atmospheric behaviors can persist for many years. In fact, "the pause" as it is often called in warming from 1998-2012 can be partly attributed to the inertial responses of the climate system though there are many other reasons. But, note that even during "the pause" ocean heat uptake proceeded almost unabated. Remember, "the pause" is largely an atmospheric phenomenon only. And on top of that "the pause" is characterized by a period of time that starts with an El Nino year and ends with a La Nina year. That obviously will skew one's perception of a trend if that's the only period of time they are considering. The fact remains that the warming from 1960 (about the time in which the anthroprogenic effect really ramped up) is 0.15C/decade, from 1980 is 0.18C/decade, from 2000 is 0.22C/decade, and from 2010 is 0.30C/decade. So not only is there no pause in the warming trend, but the warming trend is actually accelerating now.
And thanks for the link to that paper. Unfortunately it's behind a paywall and I can't seem to find a free copy. So like you I can't really see the details. But, I can see from the abstract that they are talking about stratospheric WV only. I can add a few conceptual points about WV though. The reason why WV is not communicated to the public as a cause for global warming is because it does not by itself catalyze a change in temperature; at least over long periods of time. It is certainly a greenhouse gas and a potent one at that. But, it is in a stable equilibrium with the temperature when viewed over long periods of time. Meaning that perturbations from the equilibrium level usually self correct relatively quickly. There are two reasons for this. First, the residence times of H2O molecules are really short; on the order of a few weeks at most. Second, the WV/temperature feedback is usually self limiting or destructive. Perturbations above/below the equilibrium level create downward/upward pressures to future WV concentrations. This is drastically different from CO2 which has residence times measured in centuries and which perturbations in the concentration are self reinforcing and constructive. So while WV will definitely amplify a temperature increase it does not actually catalyze it.
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