A few days ago I posted a story highlighting the drop in water vapor in the atmosphere which initially looked like the entire atmosphere due to a labeling issue by ESRL, but turned out to be only at the 300 millibar height and not up to 300mb as the ESRL graph was labeled.
Even so, that brought a lot of people into looking at and analyzing the issue further. Barry Hearn of the website junkscience.com brought to my attention a review of the various atmospheric levels contained in the ERSL database. I had planned to do this myself, but I’ve been traveling this week and didn’t have as much time as I normally would, so I’m pleased to present Barry’s writeup here for further consideration.
For some background into atmospheric absorption efficiency of common gases compared to the electromagnetic spectrum, this graph is valuable:
Note the CO2 peak at 15 microns is the only significant one, as the 2.7 and 4.3 micron CO2 peaks have little energy to absorb in that portion of the spectrum. But the H2O (water vapor) has many peaks from .8 to 8 microns, two that are fairly broad, and H2O begins absorbing almost continuously from 10 microns on up, making it overwhelmingly the major “greenhouse gas”.
Click for a larger image
Is the atmosphere holding more water vapor?
JunkScience.com
June, 2008
As followers of the enhanced greenhouse controversy are no doubt aware carbon dioxide cannot, unaided, drive catastrophic global warming — it simply lacks the physical properties.
In order to generate interesting outcomes climate modelers include impressive positive feedback from increasing atmospheric water vapor (marvelous magical multipliers, as we call them). By trivial warming of the atmosphere increased CO is supposed to facilitate an increase in the atmosphere’s capacity for the one truly significant greenhouse gas, water vapor, which then further heats the atmosphere, facilitating more water vapor and so on.
So, the obvious question is, is the atmosphere getting “wetter” and, if so, where?
Fortunately ESRL provides time series for various layers of the atmosphere:
Note that all graphics are confusingly labeled “up to 300mb only” but this refers to their maximum availability and not the current representation. Water vapor is given as specific, not relative humidity (grams water per kilogram of air) and is thus temperature independent for our purposes.
Firstly, there has been a moistening trend in the 1000mb (up to about 500 feet) layer.
Click for a larger image
While mostly flat the 925mb (to about 2,500 feet) layer has seen a rise over the last decade (slightly exceeding the 1950s)
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850mb (to about 5,000 feet — underground in much of Colorado. Colorado’s mean altitude is 6,800 feet) trend is essentially flat, perhaps lower than the 1950s.
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700mb (about 10,000 feet) down and flat.
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600mb (under 15,000 feet or about the height of Colorado’s tallest peaks) Well down and flat.
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500mb (about 18,000 feet) Same again.
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400mb (under 25,000 feet) Falling.
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300mb (30,000 feet or just above Mt. Everest) A little quirky but falling.
Click for a larger image
So, what do these time series tell us?
Secondly, the atmospheric region of most interest from a weather/climate perspective appears to be on a drying trend, contrary to that expected under the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis.
Simply eyeballing the time series suggests the 1977 Pacific phase shift is a much better fit with changes in trends than is the steady increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Bottom line is that the regions climate models are programmed to expect atmospheric moistening are not actually doing so, making either the models or the atmosphere wrong. None of the above time series leads to a plausible conclusion that we should anticipate any increase in weather activity.
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Leon, Thanks. I was frustrated by the lack of working links as well.
Barry,
“the regions climate models are programmed to expect atmospheric moistening are not actually doing so, making either the models or the atmosphere wrong.”
ROFL, of course the atmosphere is wrong, models, at least GCMs, are never wrong, because, as is pointed out in the article in Icecap, CO2 and atmospheric physics is not really ‘modeled’ in the GCMs, they are parameters set at a specific value by the modelers. (Yes, I know it isn’t quite that simple, but, as an Operations Research feedback modeler in another life, I was shocked that this is so, it makes the models just about useless in my book for predicting atmospheric feedback effects. All the model does is represent the modelers beliefs about where the feedback will end up, not where it will in real life).
Evan Jones:
Philip_B makes an interesting point about increased irrigation, I’d expect it to have a compounding effect along with UHE effects. So with a higher WV & RH at the surface I’d expect more cloud cover and greater convection (another cooling process in addition to albedo/surface shading). It’d make the surface trend warmer, but since we have both drier air & cooler temperatures in higher altitudes, the role of CO2 mustn’t be very large at either the surface or upper altitudes, since we’d expect a uniform warming trend, and never a cooling one (even w/ drier air).
There are studies also showing that both Antarctica & general upper tropospheric _relative_humidity_ are lower than had been modeled, so both will not be as warm as the (worst-case) climate models. One big known problem with the climate models has been that they modeled an averaged, constant RH in the upper altitudes (just as they have modeled a slab-like ocean). This is of course quite wrong.
The 400 mb cooling trend defies climate models projections, as does the stratospheric warming trend (they predict a cooling).
UV-B warms ozone (UV-C is filtered by O3 & O2). Pinatubo caused a drastic cooling of the stratosphere due to ozone depletion (-0.6 degrC IIRC), which imparted cooling only down to the tropopause and upper troposphere, but would’ve added that much UV wattage to the lower troposphere.
That extra UV penetrating deeper toward the surface had to have warmed (& formed) surface-level ozone, of which we have plenty & more every day. The more hybrid electric vehicles we have the more surface ozone we’ll have.
So after Pinatubo increased surface ozone + increased UV + irrigation WV + UHE probably helped make the 1990’s very warm, culminating in a huge el Nino (the 1998 WV signal shows in all of them). I don’t know if total aerosols or tropospheric soot have changed significantly, but certainly CO2’s rate of increase has risen slightly from newer, cleaner combustion sources in Asia, so there’d be less new aerosols but more ozone.
FWIW there are AGW websites that make no mention of Pinatubo and the current stratospheric warming trend.
One of the major components of tailpipe emissions is water vapor.
Ric Werme (17:18:14), thanks for the link to that graphic; it’s great.
I’ve read that the greenhouse effect of CO2 grows more slowly as levels increase — the first 20ppm have great effect while the last 20ppm have little effect.
In light of the information in this graphic, I would appreciate if someone could explain how that works.
It seems to me that this graphic perhaps doesn’t tell the whole picture. Like, perhaps it’s showing absorption for a specific concentration of these gases.
Thanks,
MikeEE
I take that question back…the link provided explains this.
MikeEE
Ok, as I look at the overall absorption curve, it appears that in the 15uM range that CO2 is “important,” you already have virtually 100% absorption of outgoing radiation. To my thinking, this would mean that virtually any increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration would have virtually no effect?
Am I missing something here?
Dave K
The global precipitable water time series. from ERSL/NCEP Reanalysis, is here:
http://davidsmith1.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/0622082.jpg
These reanalysis plots are a mix of both observations and computer “guesses” about water content, so use with some caution.
We should start using the 1.0C to 1.5C temperature increase per doubling of CO2 as THE global warming estimate. This more closely matches the experience of the past century and the long-term historical climate estimates anyway.
Really? But why start with such a flawed assumption? The vast majority of that warming “effect” is actually simple correlation. C02’s warming effect is very small, and easily overpowered by changes in solar activity, as evidenced by the cooling of the past 11 years.
If C02 levels were to actually double, which is highly unlikely, about the only effect that would have would be a significant increase in plant growth, which would be great for us, of course.
[…] of altitude June 22, 2008 Posted by gaussling in Science. trackback Here is a link to “Watts Up With That?” This is a very interesting blog on weather related matters. The writer seems to have a […]
And that, Dave K, is why they have to postulate a positive feedback whereby a tiny additional amount of warming from more CO2 leads to more evaporation of water vapour and thereby more substantial warming from that H2O. As you say, extra CO2 by itself can achieve precious little: it’s already absorbing almost everything it can.
DaveK (08:48:54) :
“Ok, as I look at the overall absorption curve, it appears that in the 15uM range that CO2 is “important,” you already have virtually 100% absorption of outgoing radiation. To my thinking, this would mean that virtually any increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration would have virtually no effect?
Am I missing something here?”
Nope, it’s the whole key to why “skeptics” don’t believe that CO2 is the dominant cause behind warming. CH4 levels have leveled off, so that’s out, O3 is level, H2O varies hugely, but as the above shows no one has definitive answers.
So if Greenhouse Gases aren’t the cause then what is? Joe D’Aleo has some interesting graphs showing that global temperatures track ocean currents related to the PDO and AMO better than they do CO2, but what drives those? There has been an “annoying” link between sunspots and climate since 1801, and the current best idea is Solar activity affecting the cosmic ray flux and that affects cloud cover. Research at CERN will provide a lot of data for us to chew over in the next couple of years.
We’ve wasted a decade or so of knowledge believing that CO2 is behind it all.
That’s right. The perfect combustion of any pure hydrocarbon with pure oxygen yields carbon dioxide and water vapor, both of which are “greenhouse” gases. So if you think the environmentalist wackos will be happy should we succeed in completely offsetting or sequestering all man-made carbon dioxide, think again. These people’s entire livelihood is dependent upon crusading against made-made pollutants. The problem, of course, is that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. And if they can succeed in labeling plant food a pollutant, I see no reason why they won’t try to label water vapor a pollutant. It’s all about fear and control.
I’ve always wondered why water vapor and CO2 are treated so differently by climate models. There is ample measurement data to show that CO2 lifetime in the atmosphere is somewhere around 5-7 years. The climate models then use an ‘effective’ atmospheric lifetime of more than 100 years based on the argument that CO2 cycles many times between surface and atmosphere before it is finally sequestered. Water vapor is commonly argued to have an atmospheric lifetime of a few days. Using the same logic, it would seem to me that water vapor has an ‘effective’ atmospheric lifetime of thousands of years before it is sequestered in ice.
There is ample measurement data to show that CO2 lifetime in the atmosphere is somewhere around 5-7 years.
I have heard this but cannot establish it. (I’d like to.) Gotta link?
From UCAR
http://dss.ucar.edu/pub/
and
http://dss.ucar.edu/pub/reanalysis/rean_model.html
[…] contrasted the text of the IPCC AR4 to figures from NOAA’s Earth System Research LaboratoryAnthony Watts had previously discussed the […]
“The increase at 1000 mb is almost ten times greater than the decrease at 300 mb.”
On the other hand, given the semi logarithmic nature of GHG absorbtion, since there are so many more molecules of H20 in the lower atmosphere, the decrease at 300mb will have more affect than a similar (absolute) decrease at 1000mb.
Anthony,
On the chart labeled “Radiation Transmitted by the Atmosphere”. What is the meaning of the blue, black, and purple lines? The purple line appears to be labeled 210-310K. I’m guessing that they are three temperature curves, but only one of them appears to be labeled.
The affect of irrigation on temperature records also messes with the assumption of Hansen and others, that rural stations represent uncontaminated data which can be used to “correct” urban stations.
Potential problems with rural sites.
1) Microsite contamination.
2) Sites that were rural 50 years ago, aren’t now.
3) Changes in irrigation and crop patterns over the last 50 years within 50 to 100 miles of the station could affect humidity patterns.
Here in Iowa I’ve had people tell me that much of the humidity in the summer is due to the corn crops. (Warning, the following was uncorroborated, and anecdotal in nature.)
Here’s a good paper by Tom V. Segalstad on carbon cycling:
Carbon cycle modelling and the residence time of natural and
anthropogenic atmospheric CO2: on the construction of the
“Greenhouse Effect Global Warming” dogma.
Evan Jones-
Segalstad has a nice review of peer-reviewed articles on CO2 in the atmosphere here http://www.co2web.info
Download the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF) report, Volume 2. Page 13 has a review of peer-reviewed literature on CO2 half-life in the atmosphere. It seems to me this was settled science back in the 1970’s. There are some familiar names among the copious peer-reviewed literature cited.
Data is what you get when you measure something. It’s not data if it’s the result of the analysis of models. This is a fundamental problem in this type of “science”. People massage, reanalyze and fudge data to create “new” data that other people then use as the basis of their analyses, and so on. The phrase “state-of-the-art” is very telling: it’s art, not science.
MarkW (06:45:39) :
“On the chart labeled “Radiation Transmitted by the Atmosphere”. What is the meaning of the blue, black, and purple lines? The purple line appears to be labeled 210-310K. I’m guessing that they are three temperature curves, but only one of them appears to be labeled.”
I think the three curves are the blackbody radiation curves for 210K, 260K, and 310K. So the center one should match Earth’s temperate zones, and the other go beyond arctic and tropical conditions.
BTW, I think there’s an important flaw in the curves. The logarithmic scale may handle some of it, but amplitude of the overall curve should climb quickly with increasing temperatures. For the application here, just showing the range of wavelengths affected is the important point and for that the graph is fine.
Another thing that I have noticed is that as the earth’s temperature increases, the peak of the outgoing radiation band starts to shift into a region that is much more transparent to IR radiation.
Ric Werme,
Do you know how the radiation curves are generated? Do they just take the average temperature of the earth and draw a curve from that value? As you well know, the temperature of the earth varies quite abit, from -70C in Antarctica in the winter, to somewhere around +35-40C in places like Death Valley in the summer.
Seems to me that the most accurate way to do such a chart would be to grid the entire planet, calculate the radiation curves for each grid, then average the curves together. That sounds like a lot of work, but it seems to me like something worth doing. If we don’t know exactly how the earth is radiating, how the heck are we ever going to figure out what is being blocked.