From this NASA press release I’ll have more on this later. The timing of this release is interesting.
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WASHINGTON – Researchers studying carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas and a key driver of global climate change, now have a new tool at their disposal: daily global measurements of carbon dioxide in a key part of our atmosphere. The data are courtesy of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua spacecraft.
Moustafa Chahine, the instrument’s science team leader at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., unveiled the new product at a briefing on recent breakthroughs in greenhouse gas, weather and climate research from AIRS at this week’s American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. The new data, which span the seven-plus years of the AIRS mission, measure the concentration and distribution of carbon dioxide in the mid-troposphere–the region of Earth’s atmosphere that is located between 5 to 12 kilometers, or 3 to 7 miles, above Earth’s surface. They also track its global transport. The product represents the first-ever release of global carbon dioxide data that are based solely on observations. The data have been extensively validated against both aircraft and ground-based observations.
“AIRS provides the highest accuracy and yield of any global carbon dioxide data set available to the research community, now and for the immediate future,” said Chahine. “It will help researchers understand how this elusive, long-lived greenhouse gas is distributed and transported, and can be used to develop better models to identify ‘sinks,’ regions of the Earth system that store carbon dioxide. It’s important to study carbon dioxide in all levels of the troposphere.”
Chahine said previous AIRS research data have led to some key findings about mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide. For example, the data have shown that, contrary to prior assumptions, carbon dioxide is not well mixed in the troposphere, but is rather “lumpy.” Until now, models of carbon dioxide transport have assumed its distribution was uniform.
Carbon dioxide is transported in the mid-troposphere from its sources to its eventual sinks. More carbon dioxide is emitted in the heavily populated northern hemisphere than in its less populated southern counterpart. As a result, the southern hemisphere is a net recipient, or sink, for carbon dioxide from the north. AIRS data have previously shown the complexity of the southern hemisphere’s carbon dioxide cycle, revealing a never-before-seen belt of carbon dioxide that circles the globe and is not reflected in transport models.
In another major finding, scientists using AIRS data have removed most of the uncertainty about the role of water vapor in atmospheric models. The data are the strongest observational evidence to date for how water vapor responds to a warming climate.
“AIRS temperature and water vapor observations have corroborated climate model predictions that the warming of our climate produced as carbon dioxide levels rise will be greatly exacerbated — in fact, more than doubled — by water vapor,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.
Dessler explained that most of the warming caused by carbon dioxide does not come directly from carbon dioxide, but from effects known as feedbacks. Water vapor is a particularly important feedback. As the climate warms, the atmosphere becomes more humid. Since water is a greenhouse gas, it serves as a powerful positive feedback to the climate system, amplifying the initial warming. AIRS measurements of water vapor reveal that water greatly amplifies warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide. Comparisons of AIRS data with models and re-analyses are in excellent agreement.
“The implication of these studies is that, should greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current course of increase, we are virtually certain to see Earth’s climate warm by several degrees Celsius in the next century, unless some strong negative feedback mechanism emerges elsewhere in Earth’s climate system,” Dessler said.
Originally designed to observe atmospheric temperature and water vapor, AIRS data are already responsible for the greatest improvement to five to six-day weather forecasts than any other single instrument, said Chahine. JPL scientists have shown a major consequence of global warming will be an increase in the frequency and strength of severe storms. Earlier this year, a team of NASA researchers showed how AIRS can significantly improve tropical cyclone forecasting. The researchers studied deadly Typhoon Nargis in Burma (Myanmar) in May 2008. They found the uncertainty in the cyclone’s landfall position could have been reduced by a factor of six had more sophisticated AIRS temperature data been used in the forecasts.
AIRS observes and records the global daily distribution of temperature, water vapor, clouds and several atmospheric gases including ozone, methane and carbon monoxide. With the addition of the mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide data set this week, a seven-year digital record is now complete for use by the scientific community and the public.
Animation of the 3-D transport and distribution of water vapor as measured by AIRS from June through November 2005. Image credit: NASA › Play animation (Quicktime) | › Play animation (Windows Media Player)
enlarge imageFor more on AIRS, see http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/ .
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Considering that China is now the world’s largest emitter of CO2, what is responsible for the large concentration over Nevada and practically none over China?
Since I would expect wind patterns in the Northern Hemisphere to generally go West to East, there really isn’t much West of Northern Nevada except the SF Bay Area and Nevada itself is mostly desert.
That animation doesn’t seem to have any relation to actual CO2 sources.
Wow. I had no idea that water vapor was a “feed back”. I guess without anthropogenic CO2 there would be no water vapor. /sarc.
“As the climate warms, the atmosphere becomes more humid
I would expect so! After all, the earth is 70% water, and the evaporation rate has to go up.
But, more water vapour should give more clouds, thus providing a cooling, should it not?
So what are these models doing? Are they showing more clouds or not?
Notably missing is a discussion of clouds.
Hmm … it looks like most of the water vapor is where the highest concentrations of CO2 aren’t.
yes but does the study include the feedback of clouds resulting from the water vapor increase ??
More interesting is the inhomogeneous distribution of CO2 ?
Hmmmm – more CO2 – more water vapor – more feedback – unless –
more water vapor = more clouds.
Looks like they forgot to include that little interelation.
[AIRS temperature and water vapor observations have corroborated climate model predictions that the warming of our climate produced as carbon dioxide levels rise will be greatly exacerbated — in fact, more than doubled — by water vapor,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.]
How can this happen when the models are false? They are matching a fraudulent model. I’m puzzled unless the same trick is being used.
Interesting. Dessler, with Minschwander, in 2004 published a paper using data from NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) that showed water vapor feedback was much weaker than the IPCC value. Then, in 2008, he published a solo paper claiming that it was in fact stronger than the UN IPCC value. Now this.
“JPL scientists have shown a major consequence of global warming will be an increase in the frequency and strength of severe storms.”
Could have sworn we’re seeing less, not more?
Does something sound fishy in this article? How about saying this is a first step in properly analyzing the atmosphere? Also I am not certain the following statement is correct:
“AIRS temperature and water vapor observations have corroborated climate model predictions that the warming of our climate produced as carbon dioxide levels rise will be greatly exacerbated — in fact, more than doubled — by water vapor,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
Well, NASA press release speculation has a dubious track record. Let some independent thinkers have a go at the data before doing the Chicken Little routine again.
“[…] scientists using AIRS data have removed most of the uncertainty about the role of water vapor in atmospheric models.” […] “[…] unless some strong negative feedback mechanism emerges elsewhere in Earth’s climate system.”
Why bother attacking the untenable assumptions? Does it make any difference when religion underpins belief? On to other things…
My understanding is that increased water vapor means an increase in low-level cloud cover, which is a negative feedback. The end of the story states that AIRS observes and records clouds but there was no mention of the cloud cover measurements in the body of the story.
Also, my BS flag went up when the story stated that the CO2 patterns are different than the climate models assume, yet the satellite data corroborates the models. If the models were updated to match the true CO2 distributions, would they still validate the satellite data?
I don’t think we are getting the full story here. This is merely another advocacy piece.
Does not look like this at all
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2009/10/20091030_ibuki_e.html
(scroll down)
If they have a history match with false results then they don’t have a match. You have been duped. Something is fabricated here is what I’m saying. Interesting measurements but we only have 7 years worth. We need hundreds of years of data.
I am not sure but if this is findings already reported here: http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2008b.pdf than this is not worth a iota. Mesurements from 5 years is hardly something that would normally qualify as “climate”science. The results in the article are without any error analysis whatsoever and if you do one you´re in for a surprise: http://landshape.org/enm/propagation-of-uncertainty-through-dessler/
“The confidence limits of the mean are then 1.96*3.16*0.37 or 2.29, giving a lower limits to the estimated 2.04 W/m2/K value of vapor feedback of -0.25 W/m2/K. Being less than zero, this indicates that zero feedback is within the limits of uncertainty.”
Dressler actually shows that there is room for a negative feedback, still.
We know the air holds more water vapour when it warms.
The question is whether the warming is caused by extra CO2 or by some other cause such as increased ocean energy release during a positive PDO phase.
Then we need to know how much warming is caused by human CO2 as compared to the natural warming.
Then whether a warming of the air alone from more CO2 is capable of defeating the ability of the oceans to cool the air above the sea surfaces.
Then there is evidence that global air humidity varies vary little because the hydrological cycle simply speeds up to eject extra energy to the stratosphere
thereby ensuring that surface air temperatures do not diverge from sea surface temperaures.
The models and the above assertions seem all to be based on the recent 30 year period when there was a correlation between rising CO2 and rising air temperatures. The cause of the warming was attributed in the models to the CO2 but more likely it was the warmer sea surfaces during that period.
If we now see cooling of the air due to cooling ocean surfaces (already looking likely and partly accepted following the recent powerful La Nina event) then the role of CO2 needs re-assessment despite the overconfident assertions in the above report.
I missed something here. I think this is a great story and that AIRS can be a great tool, and I’m excited to see it.
But I missed something here. Exactly how does AIRS validate assumptions about water vapour acting as a positive forcing?
Are they measuring quantity? Distribution? Temperature of water vapor? The press release doesn’t say…
“virtually certain ” = “wild assed guess”
I would like to know how the warming signal due to the absorption of heat by CO2 was seperated from the water vapor feedbacks, and how the feedback was isolated from other forcings. They make it sound like magic. Yet, as Roy Spencer has pointed out, no one has been able to islolate the water vapor feedback signal and demonstrate anthropogenic causality.
Everytime there is warming, the fascile assumption is made that it must be CO2. This is circular reasoning.
They timed it wrong. It was supposed to be released 4 weeks ago. Now it’s too late to save the farce in Copenhagen.
“JPL scientists have shown a major consequence of global warming will be an increase in the frequency and strength of severe storms.”
Just where were the peer-reviewed papers to make this claim?
They did not appear to look for the negative feedback. If I had to guess, it would be along the lines of increased water vapor leading to increased clouds, reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth.
This seems so obvious that one has to wonder if not looking for this is deliberate.
I’d like to know what Lindzen (sp?) thinks of this. He has published ERBA (earth radiation budget experiment) data showing that increases CO2 results in more rather than less radiation from the earth at the top of the atmosphere, and argues this is because the response to increases trapped radiation causes an “iris” effect in the cloud cover that results in more clouds, whiter clouds and more reflection of energy back into space. I don’t see the reflected radiation taken into account in this paper.