Via press release from the AGU:
Stratospheric water vapor increase at Colorado site
Water vapor in the atmosphere is responsible for a significant portion of the greenhouse effect, and even small changes in the upper troposphere or lower stratosphere can have a large effect on climate. A new analysis of balloon-borne water vapor measurements using frost point hygrometers over Boulder, Colorado, shows that stratospheric water vapor has increased over the past 30 years. Hurst et al. break the long measurement record into four discrete time periods and determined the water vapor trends in each period for five 2-kilometer-thick stratospheric layers 16 km to 26 km above the ground.
They find that, on average, stratospheric water vapor increased by about 1 part per million by volume (27 percent) over the past 30 years, though there were many shorter-term variations in the record. Water vapor levels increased during 1980 to 1989 and 1990 to 2000, decreased from 2001 to 2005, and then increased again after 2005. The authors find that, at most, 30 percent of the observed water vapor increases can be attributed to greater amounts of methane oxidation in the stratosphere. The 2001 to 2005 decrease in midlatitude water vapor has been linked to observations of anomalously low tropopause temperatures in the tropics, but, to date, no connection between the observed water vapor increases and tropical tropopause temperatures has been found despite ongoing efforts.
Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, doi:10.1029/2010JD015065, 2011
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010JD015065
Title: Stratospheric water vapor trends over Boulder, Colorado: Analysis of the 30 year Boulder record
=========================================================
A few points:
1. Boulder is not the entire world (though some there think it is), this is a single point of measurment.
2. The amount of increase is tiny, in the range of 0.04 to 0.09 parts per million per year
3. I have located a slide show from NOAA ESRL, outlining the findings in a graphically rich presentation, which you can view here (PDF)
Are there any other similar studies from different parts around the world? Thanks in advance to anyone able to answer my query and hopefully supply some links.
90% of the downward long wave IR (LWIR) radiation reaching the surface from both H2O and CO2 originates from the first kilometer layer above the surface. The temperature of this layer is set by (moist) convection from the surface and long range tranport – (weather). It is this convection that drives the ‘greenhouse effect’, not the LWIR absorption. The atmosphere is an open cycle heat engine, not a spectrometer. The idea that the LWIR flux from the upper troposphere or stratosphere has any influence on surface temperature is just plain wrong. Does NOAA understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Or molecular linewidths? The whole radiative forcing/perturbation treatment of equilibrium based climate change is incorrect. The measurements are probably correct, but any claims of climate influence belong to the realm of the fictional computer greenhouseland inhabited by the IPCC and its cronies. Solomon is nothing more than a climate astrologer. Garbage in, gospel out. This is just researchers grubbing for grant money by making exaggerated and in this case false claims about climate change. The research needs to be done, but please just report the results without references to the apocalypse.
Here is a quiz. Looking at that chart, can you spot were the SR-71 and Concorde aircraft were retired?
How about Desert Storm?
The War in Iraq with all those B-52, B-2 flights?
I cannot find a correlation with frequent or infrequent stratospheric flights periods with those curves. I thought it would be visible.
FYI: Concorde flew 14-18 km 1973-2000, 2001-2003
SR-71: retired 1998, ceiling ~ 27 km.
B-52 ceiling is about 16 km. with Gulf war in 2003
FWIW: 1998-2002 had 5-8 Shuttle missions / year
then 2003 had 1 (Columbia), 0 in 2004, 1 in 2005, ramping up to 5 in 2009.
Maybe, just maybe the suspension of the Concorde after the Paris 2000 crash coincides with the fall in the red 16-18km curve, but it is tenuous at best.
So if man is responsible for those H2O curves, I cannot pin it on >known< aircraft or spacecraft.
It’s those blasted jet streams always fouling our clear skies. Clear in early morning, jet-streamy by late morning, stratospheric cloudy by early afternoon.
Just to make it clear. Boulder is a protective bubble that keeps us Boulder citizens living in a place that is really an almost perfect place (OK, someone was shot and killed today on the Hill. That happens every 67 years.). This bubble protects us from the realities of the grimmer side of life. Even us conservatives. Please do not publish this. Boulder is Xanadu! The streets are lines with pot. OK, not so much, but they are line with medical pot clinics. Same thing!
Of course, you need to know a few essential things before you decide to move here:
1.) You should have either have a trust fund or a willingness to work at Whole Foods or REI. K, thats false. Boulder has more software engineers per capita than any other place in the galaxy. Some work at Whole Foods!
2.) You need to withstand the horrible weather conditions here. Often in December, you get the 60’s and huge gangs of cyclists making you feel totally unfit. It was 75 here last Wednesday. Horrible. I am fair skinned and there are too many sunny days here to be healthy.
3.) Too many great places to eat. You will get fat. Unless you exercise. When you see the people who live here that exercise, you will feel humiliated and will immediately move to Dayton.
4.) We have critters here. Black Bears, mountain lions, apparently increasing moose populations, skunks, raccoons, foxes (not talking about the females that attend the University of Colorado… spring is eye opening here! WARNING: Never visit Boulder over Memorial Day Weekend. You will be subject to Chief Niwot’s curse.). Some of those critters may eat your pets. Not the students…
5.) Most important, its too stress free here. You will live too long, exhaust your retirement savings, and end up living in a ditch by Boulder Creek with the critters.
So please, stay away from this horrific place.
-Tom
So as well as a huge increase in CO2, we now have a large increase (27%) in stratospheric dihydrogen monoxide too. In the meantime, global average temperature has flat-lined.
The sandwich of CAGW is now in big trouble – it would seem that someone has stolen the meat???
If there had been, and their results showed a negative or flat trend, would they have been published?
Or submitted?
Or completed (once their first drafts showed how they were shaping up)?
Anthony,
I would have thought evaporation is how water vapor gets into the atmosphere. There have been great amounts of ocean heat in the Arctic with that nice cold air blowing over top. It generated enough evaporation this winter to just about cover ALL the land mass in the northern hemisphere.
What is this “greater amounts of methane oxidation in the stratosphere”? So, this makes water vapor?
D Bonson says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Are there any other similar studies from different parts around the world?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-stratosphere-global-warming.htm
“Before 1993, the only observations of stratospheric water vapor were made by weather balloons above Boulder, Colorado”
Water vapor increased early 80s and early 90s so the obvious cause is volcanoes.
It’s water vapor emitted by liberal jabbering over major political events.
1981-1983 – Rising alarm during Reagan’s first two years.
1983-1989 – Up, down, sideways as liberals adjust.
1989-1993 – Bush 41. Scary. But promise is on the horizon.
1993-1994 – Clinton in office. Ahhh!
1994 – Republicans take House of Representatives.
1994-1996 – Travelgate, Whitewatergate, FBI filegate.
1996 – Jon Benet Ramsey’s murder redirects much discussion.
1997-1999 – Clinton re-elected; impeachment fails. Ahhh!
1999-2000 – ? Supreme Court rules against line-item veto, tobacco as addictive drug, and presidential candidate Gore ?
2001 – 2005 – Push for consensus on 9/11, Iraq War.
2006-2009 – Bush 43 shown to be [snip] in prep. for election. [that goes too far – blog rules ~jove, mod]
2009 onward – Too soon to tell.
I thought that stratospheric water vapour gave up its latent heat above the main radiation traps thus circumventing the greenhouse effect. It used to be reckoned that 40% of the Earth`s radiated heat escaped via that route. Has the science changed?
These danged GHG’s are all increasing– and the temperature still refuses to follow suit.
There is a clue there about the role of GHG’s in climate.
I agree with the first half of the first sentence, but the last half is wrong. The absolute amount of water vapor (not relative amount-ppmv) has a “greenhouse effect”. The absolute amount in the stratosphere is too small to have any significant effect.
That first statement is in the press release, but not in the abstract.
People should view the PowerPoint slide show at the link provided. It claims that
This would seem to imply that increases in stratospheric water vapor (SWV) have the inverse effect — increase global surface temperatures. With change scales of 1 ppmv, this seems a rather strong claim.
The slide show also makes it clear that the authors believe stratospheric methane is the direct cause of increasing SWV — thus the cause of 25% slowing in global surface temperature increase rates?
I must be mixed up — I thought methane was a way more powerful GHG than water. So, in this SWV scenario, oxidation of methane increases SWV — but must, at the same time, decrease stratospheric methane. Which to my (admittedly) ignorant mind, should reduce the GHG warming effect, not increase it.
Can anyone help me here? a simpleton explanation of what they are claiming.
I have never seen any studies documenting how much H2O man emits. Many industrial processes emit steam. Air conditioners often use water cooling towers. Even our breathing emits H2O.
I wonder how much of the anthropogenic green house gasses emitted by man is H2O, and what percentage of the greenhouse effect is caused by this.
Will the EPA seek regulation powers for H2O soon?
Susan Solomon published a paper in Science last year showing that global water vapour levels in the stratosphere are not doing much (and it even declined between 2000 to 2009).
http://www.theresilientearth.com/files/images/stratospheric_water_vapor.jpg
http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~plattner/papers/solomon10sci.pdf
In the troposphere, the ENSO dominates the overall global level of water vapour and it is hard to see an overall trend.
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/3198/enso3monvstcwv1948jan10.png
Roy Clark says:
Paging Dunning and Kruger ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect )! Cleanup needed in Aisle 7!
Yes, convection is very important near the surface (which is why the radiative balance near the surface is not what is most important and your statement about where the downward LWIR that reaches the surface is from is largely irrelevant). However, convection is not operable between the earth and space. The only way to exchange significant energy is by radiation.
Yes…They understand the 2nd Law well enough not to be fooled by incorrect arguments sometimes made that reference it. They also apparently understand the 1st Law better than you do: I.e., they understand how the radiative balance of the earth works.
Fred H. Haynie says:
Again, it is you who are wrong. At any rate, the total amount of water vapor in the column has been increasing too (references in the introduction to this paper: introhttp://www.sciencemag.org/content/310/5749/841.abstract ). In fact, that has been easier to measure than that farther up in the atmosphere, although it is less important to radiative balance, which is why there is interest in looking at measurements at higher levels.
I’ve seen estimates that the percentage of water vapor in our atmosphere is 0.4%
Add that 1 ppm in the stratosphere, make the assumption of no change in the rest of the atmosphere- else we’d have read about percentage increase in the atmosphere- not just the stratosphere, and you get a total increase from 4000 ppm to 4001 ppm.
For example, using Trenbeth’s figure of a 492 watt surface flux, with 240 watts
coming from the sun, the greenhouse increase would be 492-240 = 252 watts.
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/EarthsEnergyBalance
Assuming that full 252 watts is due to water vapor, a linear relationship would give a wattage increase of 252/4000 = 0.063 watts.
Given that increases in water vapor would have a logarithmic effect just like CO2, the warming from that 1 ppm increase would be unmeasurable.
Joel,
The less than 1% stratospheric water vapor in the column is not going to have a significant effect on energy lost to space being lost in the variability of the more than 99% below the stratosphere that is in control.
Garbage in, gospel out. Fitting. Hardcoded functions set to trip to warming/drying for all phenomena, irregardless of how many times the real world comes out diametrically opposed to such function output. Small wonder that govt. climate forecasts are so bad.
Adjusted meteorological data in, weather forecast went thataway.
Grant opportunity: Wanted- software developers to clean up spaghetti-code mess and update all functions found to be if/then/else rather than if/then.
“Joe Dunfee says:
March 19, 2011 at 6:52 am
I have never seen any studies documenting how much H2O man emits.”
Humans emit lots of H2O when breathing or burning hydrocarbons, but that is totally irrelevant in comparison to what gets evaporated by the oceans of the world. Furthermore, whatever amounts we do emit fall as rain when the relative humidity gets too high. The maximum percentage of water vapor in the air is about 4% in regions where it is very hot and very humid. It does not build up in the atmosphere like CO2. However even though CO2 has increased from 280 ppm to 390 ppm in 260 years, there is no reason to believe that even a doubling of CO2 is dangerous.
A paper on the link between stratospheric water vapor and global surface temperature has just been published this month. The abstract doesn’t say so, but I believe they use modeling to prove that there is a causal link.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1219.abstract
Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000–2009 by about 25% compared to that which would have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapor probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% as compared to estimates neglecting this change. These findings show that stratospheric water vapor is an important driver of decadal global surface climate change.
Here is a news report on this paper.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/01/solomon-20100130.html
Fred H. Haynie says:
March 19, 2011 at 10:13 am
Joel,
The less than 1% stratospheric water vapor in the column is not going to have a significant effect on energy lost to space being lost in the variability of the more than 99% below the stratosphere that is in control.
You are wrong about that. The temperature of the of water vapor, and other GHG’s in the stratosphere, which is the top layer of the atmosphere. strongly affects the energy balance of the planet. It is from this top layer that the radiation in the GHG band width is emitted into space. If this layer is colder the rate of energy emission is lower.
Fred H. Haynie says:
And, you know this how? You do realize that the location in altitude matters a lot…not just the total water vapor in the column?
“greater amounts of methane oxidation in the stratosphere”
Yet another chemical process high up. I’m finding references to them all the time but no one anywhere has any idea how they all interact in response to variability in the mix of wavelengths and particles coming in from the sun.
Chemical reactions especially those involving ozone and water vapour are well capable of altering the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere and thereby changing the surface pressure distribution to alter cloudiness, global albedo and the amount of sunlight getting into the oceans.
I don’t think climate change has much to do with radiative physics at all. It is more likely to be atmospheric chemistry working with the hydrological cycle.
As energy is shifted faster or slower from seas to air and from air to space the global energy budget changes for net warming or net cooling and the atmospheric heights vary accordingly for little or no surface change apart from localised warming of the ocean skin. That ocean skin provides the engine for the whole hydrological cycle with the gearing supplied from a variable mix of bottom up oceanic and top down solar influences and the fuel being solar even if some of it is from downward infra red from the atmosphere.
So, abandon all this inconclusive chatter about radiative physics and let’s look into the much more complex and unknown issue of atmospheric chemistry.
Joel and Eadler,
Put some numbers behind your strong effects beliefs. Use the reannalysis data which contains SST, precipitation rate, precipitable water, and OLR at the TOA. Calculate the temperature at the top of the atmosphere using S-B equation at a location in the Arctic and another near the equator where the amount of water in the atmosphere is an order of magnitude different. Estimate the optical thickness of the atmosphere for the two sites using the differance between SST and temperature at TOA and wet lapse rate for tropics and dry laps rate for Arctic. Regress these values on precipitation rate and precipitable water. Click on my name for another approach.
For those of us who deny the greenhouse effect of CO2 this is a somewhat academic argument. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that far from being a ‘greenhouse gas’ water vapour is in fact a moderator of temperature. As it has a high specific heat it has a cooling effect as temperatures rise. (It has nearly twice the specific heat of dry air at constant pressure.) And as temperatures fall it condenses giving up heat thus reducing cooling.
Richard E Smith says:
March 19, 2011 at 2:14 pm
For those of us who deny the greenhouse effect of CO2 this is a somewhat academic argument. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that far from being a ‘greenhouse gas’ water vapour is in fact a moderator of temperature. As it has a high specific heat it has a cooling effect as temperatures rise. (It has nearly twice the specific heat of dry air at constant pressure.) And as temperatures fall it condenses giving up heat thus reducing cooling.
The amount of water vapor in the air at its maximum is 4%. This has a small effect on the specific heat of the air.
Water vapors effect on radiation flow is much larger. Measurements show that the greenhouse radiation on average, is over 300W/M2, almost twice the solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth. Without it the earth would be 32C cooler. The condensation of water vapor does supply energy to the atmosphere, but it is far less than the greenhouse effect.
It is all summarized in this diagram:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/images/earth_rad_budget_kiehl_trenberth_1997_big.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/climate/warming_clouds_albedo_feedback.html&h=456&w=664&sz=40&tbnid=khMQlXF5TEG-vM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=138&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtrenberth%2Bearths%2Benergy%2Bbudget%2Bdiagram&zoom=1&q=trenberth+earths+energy+budget+diagram&hl=en&usg=__kGlmg9zxolVkeFxVufPvfrtBHf8=&sa=X&ei=CTSFTZGsNNDqgQeu7LifAg&ved=0CBsQ9QEwAA
With these numbers, why anyone would deny there is a greenhouse effect defies my imagination.
Fred H. Haynie says:
March 19, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Joel and Eadler,
Put some numbers behind your strong effects beliefs. Use the reannalysis data which contains SST, precipitation rate, precipitable water, and OLR at the TOA. Calculate the temperature at the top of the atmosphere using S-B equation at a location in the Arctic and another near the equator where the amount of water in the atmosphere is an order of magnitude different. Estimate the optical thickness of the atmosphere for the two sites using the differance between SST and temperature at TOA and wet lapse rate for tropics and dry laps rate for Arctic. Regress these values on precipitation rate and precipitable water. Click on my name for another approach.
I don’t want or need to spend time doing this.
I rely on scientists who are trained and paid to do this sort of work. They publish peer reviewed papers and other scientists check their work and build on it. They do this way better than you or I could do it. In my mind amateur scientist bloggers have a bigger burden of proof than professional scientists.
Fred H. Haynie says:
March 19, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Joel and Eadler,
Put some numbers behind your strong effects beliefs. Use the reannalysis data which contains SST, precipitation rate, precipitable water, and OLR at the TOA. Calculate the temperature at the top of the atmosphere using S-B equation at a location in the Arctic and another near the equator where the amount of water in the atmosphere is an order of magnitude different. Estimate the optical thickness of the atmosphere for the two sites using the differance between SST and temperature at TOA and wet lapse rate for tropics and dry laps rate for Arctic. Regress these values on precipitation rate and precipitable water. Click on my name for another approach.
The percentage effect of greenhouse gas components has no standard definition. Here is what Wikipedia says on the basis of different papers that have been written on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
Naturally occurring greenhouse gases have a mean warming effect of about 33 °C (59 °F).[33][C] The major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70 percent of the greenhouse effect; carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26 percent; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9 percent; and ozone (O3), which causes 3–7 percent.[34][35][36] Clouds also affect the radiation balance, but they are composed of liquid water or ice and so have different effects on radiation from water vapor.
Eadler,
So you are a non-scientist “true believer”, having put your faith in “climate scientist” clergy and the IPCC bible. Yet you feel qualified to preach their gospel in blogs and question the qualifications of those who question you. I consider myself a scientist, having done research in atmospheric science for over twenty years; and authored or coauthored over 60 peer reviewed papers. I evaluate data to get to the truth. Google “Fred H. Haynie” and you will find some of my publications.
Fred: You play some silly statistical games, find a result completely in conflict with the accepted science built up over the last century and conclude that you are right and all that other science (which is based on much better work than simplistic statistical regressions) is wrong. That is not being scientific; it is being arrogant!
Joal,
Ask statisticians who they think has been playing “silly statistical games” before you decide who is being arrogant. The techniques I use to analyze data do not bias the results like subjectively motivated “what if” models.
eadler says:
“Water vapors effect on radiation flow is much larger. Measurements show that the greenhouse radiation on average, is over 300W/M2, almost twice the solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth. Without it the earth would be 32C cooler.”
eadler then provides a link to the absurd Kiehl & Trenberth energy flows diagram (thank you eadler, I am familiar with it as are most, if not all, readers of this blog) and goes on to say:
“With these numbers, why anyone would deny there is a greenhouse effect defies my imagination.”
So eadler, after K&T, says the greenhouse gases take the Sun’s energy and double it. Effectively another couple of Suns. Quite remarkable given that all the energy is derived from the Sun in the first place. Whatever happened to the laws of energy conservation? What is remarkable is not that anyone would deny the greenhouse effect, but that climate science has arrived at the preposterous conclusion that energy can be multiplied in this way.
Fred: Regression is notoriously bad at establishing cause-and-effect and using it in the case of CO2 global variations that are quite small is just silly, particularly when one can do spectral analyzes.
I am sorry but a poorly-executed statistical analysis does not trump a lot of more careful studies that actually take the mechanistically-understood issues into account (like the actual absorption lines of the substances involved).
The question that you should be asking is not “Where did the rest of the scientific community go wrong?” but rather “Where did I go wrong?” and, yes, the fact that you are not doing that is indeed a sign of a certain lack of humility…as well as what I would frankly call “scientific immaturity”. (Heck, it even explaining in detail where you think the scientific community has gone wrong would be an improvement over just showing your analysis and thinking it trumps all the work that they have done without you even addressing it!)
A mature scientist does not operate in a vacuum where the work of others is just ignored and his work is elevated above those of all these others. Even people like Einstein and Galileo, who were really brilliant, didn’t do this (at least to any degree that you are).
Joal,
What are your qualifications with respect to scientific research and the use of statistical techniques that allows you to be so judgemental of mine? I’m well aware of the limitations of using statistical techniques (especially trying to prove cause and effect). An early paper I wrote on the subject can be found by Googling “Fred H. Haynie”+statistics. As to understanding the effects of a couple of vibrational bands in the IR spectra of CO2, in one of my early papers I calculated the thermodynamic functions at elevated temperatures for iron penta-carbonyl and nickel carbonyl using spectral data and the rigid-rotator, harmonic oscilator approximation. As to scientific maturity and who is right and who is wrong, I was doing atmospheric research at EPA before the IPPC was born. Modern climate science has not grown up. They got a bad start by doing subjective research motivated by international politics. The real data will tell us who is right and who is wrong.
Fred: You can google “Joel D. Shore” if you want to see my qualifications. However, it is not my qualifications that are really the issue because I am not the one saying that the rest of the scientific community is wrong and I am right. If you want be taken seriously in the scientific community on this issue, I suggest you submit your study for peer-review. However, my guess is that they may want you to actually address other work in the field and may not be quite convinced that your little regression exercise illustrates how you are the second coming of Galileo and all of the evidence on the other side pales in comparison to your wonderful statistical demolition of a whole field of scientific research! But, hey, I’m just guessing! Maybe they’ll love it.
Joel,
I had done that before I ask the question. I have followed your comments on blogs as well. I’m not saying that the rest of the scientific community has got it wrong, only the small number of “climate scientist” that have been doing research and writing for the IPCC. I am not a lone scientist in this thinking. There are many more with better qualifications that think as I do and have published. You analyze the data the best you know how as I suggested and see what it tells you. If you wish to prove the point that water vapor in the stratosphere is a significant player, the reannalsis data set gives values of absolute humidity as a function of atmospheric pressure. You can determine the relative effects of each level on OLR.
Why?
Probably impossible to say. Expect a whole load of conjecture that CO2-induced warming came first, and that this is positive feedback, but there’s nothing here that shows cause and/or effect, or in what order.
“”””” Joe Dunfee says:
March 19, 2011 at 6:52 am
I have never seen any studies documenting how much H2O man emits. Many industrial processes emit steam. Air conditioners often use water cooling towers. Even our breathing emits H2O.
I wonder how much of the anthropogenic green house gasses emitted by man is H2O, and what percentage of the greenhouse effect is caused by this.
Will the EPA seek regulation powers for H2O soon? Well we know that the emissions of CO2 from the chemical conversion of Hydrocarbons; probably emits even more H2O than CO2, seeing as most hydrocarbons have more H2, than C. Well not with Aromatic hydrocarbons; but those are typically not allowed in for example gasoline, being somewhat carcinogenic.