1970, but the there has been a recent increase since 2010 at the 300 and 400 mbar levels.
| Total precipitable water is an important climate parameter as it is a measure of the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, which is the most important greenhouse gas. Water vapor increases with global warming and in the climate models it amplifies the direct small warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The greenhouse effect is much more sensitive to water vapor in the upper atmosphere than near the surface. As seen in the graph above, this article shows that declining humidity in the upper atmosphere fully offsets the greenhouse effect of increasing humidity in the lower atmosphere. Eliminating the water vapor feedbacks from climate models would reduce the multi-model mean equilibrium climate sensitivity from 3.2 °C to 1.7°C and would reduce the social cost of carbon dioxide calculated by the FUND economic model, with two updates, from 2018US$‑1.79/tCO2 to US$-7.14/tCO2at 3% discount rate. The negative signs indicate that climate change is beneficial. Note that there are other serious problems with the climate models that exaggerate climate sensitivity. The climate models fail to consider the urban heat island effect (UHIE), which contaminates the surface temperature record, and natural climate change from ocean oscillations and solar activity, which are falsely attributed to greenhouse gas warming. |
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Is that my imagination or does the global relative humidity in the 300 and 400 mbar levels correspond to the “warming pause” ?
The lead post has generated a lot of good comments.
I’m glad to see a number of commenters express the need to use Absolute Humidity as a measure of atmospheric energy contained in water vapor rather than Relative Humidity which is such a vague term where the energy levels are concerned.
I use graphical charts for my check on weather/forecasts and keep an eye on the dewpoint and dumped the RH as it cluttered the graph.
If climate change is beneficial, then why is less global warming producing more benefits?
3.2 C had -$1.79, while 1.7C has -$7
Hi MikeN, The paper linked in the lead post which I wrote, shows that the social cost of carbon dioxide with ECS = 3.2 C is -$1.79/tCO2. That means the social net benefit of CO2 emissions is +$1.79/tCO2. The paper shows, assuming the NOAA dataset is reasonably accurate, the the warming experienced to date have not caused a positive water vapour feedback. Eliminating that feedback reduces the ECS to 1.7 C and increased the social net benefit of CO2 to +7.14/tCO2.
Yes, slower warming is beneficial at both 3% and 5% discount rates, see table 5. At slower warming but the same CO2 emissions, we continue to get the benefits of CO2 fertilization of plants and crops, and we push the harmful effects of warming far into the future where is is greatly discounted.
I am only referring to the radiative feedbacks of water vapour, including the related lapse rate feedback. This says nothing about the changes to convection or to evaporation and precipitation. Warming should also cause a strong negative feedback from a more vigorous water cycle.
D. J. Hawkins said:”….there is no need to justify or explain natural cycles.” +1 Unless they don’t fit in to your theory.
Direct link to the Ken Gregory pdf, which is excellent BTW
https://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/TPW-and-GHE.pdf
Everyone should understand the difference between absolute humidity and relative humidity.
They are not the same thing.
Total Precipitable Water (TPW) is one way to express absolute humidity.
Global average TPW has not changed significantly in decades, which is absolute proof that global temperature has not changed in decades.
“The negative signs indicate that climate change is beneficial.”
I get a little tired of physical scientists of various kinds talking about “beneficial” (or otherwise) in respect to some physical number, driven by ignorant alarmism. Benefit/cost is TO LIFE. We need to remember the studies of paleontologists that concluded warming up to 6C means more abundant life and more biodiversity. We need to remember and use the term “climate optimum,” meaning warm period.
But I have seen the IR graphs from Organic Chemistry 2, and the huge one from -OH. I have been wondering how much water vapor is in the air, compared to .04% CO2. So I am keeping this article.
Two important articles by Erich Schaffer over at NoTricksZone; the second one uses a new data source, aviation flight weather records, to come to a surprising conclusion – the net effect of clouds is warming, not cooling. But – this is bad for warming climate models which assume the opposite.
https://notrickszone.com/2020/09/27/plenty-of-physics-flaws-accumulate-into-a-huge-ghe-hoax-the-dark-secret-behind-surface-emissivity/
https://notrickszone.com/2020/09/11/austrian-analyst-things-with-greenhouse-effect-ghe-arent-adding-up-something-totally-wrong/
Something like enthalpy energy has been overlooked.
The original article says that “relative humidity” has been declining at the 500 – 700 mb levels of the atmosphere (although 700 mb looks rather stable since 2000, and 600 mb looks stable since 1990), while it has been increasing at the 300 – 400 mb levels recently.
But “relative humidity” by definition is the ratio of the actual mole fraction water vapor to the mole fraction water vapor at saturation, where the latter depends strongly on temperature. For example, the vapor pressure of water increases by 7.7% from 50 F to 52 F, so that warming the air by 2 F (1.11 C) would decrease the relative humidity by about 7.2% for the same amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.
So, if the relative humidity increases slightly, is this due to an increase in the actual mass of water vapor in the atmosphere at a given altitude, or a decrease in temperature at the same altitude, or a combination of both? Relative humidity is a poor measure of water content, since it depends on two variables (water content and temperature) which affect it in opposite directions.
Such data would be more meaningful if given in terms of absolute humidity, or mass water vapor per unit volume of air.
Steve, you obviously did not read the paper. Just because Anthony chose to put figure 3 of the paper as the lead image of the post, doesn’t mean I used relative humidity to evaluate the water vapour feedback. See table 1 which gives trends of absolute humidity. Figure 4 shows absolute humidity. Table 2 shows trends of absolute humidity by atmospheric layer. The key figure of the paper, figure 6 is of total precipitable water vapour (TPW) and the greenhouse effect of it, Effective PW, which is based on absolute humidity of each layer.
Ken,
I read your paper and thought it to be very interesting and you put a lot work into it. Your Table 3 was quite interesting and I hope to go over it again when I have time. Some of the other commenters my have ‘cringed’ when seeing a couple of charts using relative humidity but would agree with your paper as a whole. Some of us read a lot of the links in comments and articles and ‘relative humidity’ makes me cringe and often I just move on.
This brief post is very important. Soon I will post my 30-years of precipitable water vapor measurements (4 Feb 1990 to 2020). My data affirm this post, but for the full water vapor column.
Will look forward to that Forrest.
For those that believe in the radiametric greenhouse effect despite the fact that the radiametric greenhouse effect has not been observed anywhere in the solar system, it is a fact that H2O is the primary greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. Molecule per molecule, H2O is a stronger absorber of IR than is CO2 and on average there is 50 times more H2O in the atmosphere than is CO2. The theory is that CO2 warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere causing even more warming and so forth. However, besides being the primary greenhouse gas, H2O is a major coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the Earth’s surface, which involves mostly some form of H2O, to where clouds form and more readily radiate the heat energy to space. The overall cooling effect of H2O is evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly lower than the dry lapse rate allowing more heat energy to more easily move to higher altitudes where it is radiated out to space. So H2O actually operates as a negative feedback reducing any warming that CO2 might cause.
A researcher from Japan pointed out that the calculations of climate sensitivity of CO2 not including feedbacks neglect the fact that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause a slight reduction in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere which is a cooling effect that reduces the climate sensitivity of CO2 by more than a factor of 20 so instead of 1.2 degrees C, a better estimate of the climate sensitivity of CO2 is less than .06 degrees C. When one includes the negative feedback of H2O, the climate sensitivity of CO2 is effectively zero. So there is good reason why no one has been able to measure the climate sensitivity of CO2 or detect a radiametric greenhouse effect anywhere in the solar system because there is nothing to measure of detect. It is all a matter of science.
William:
An excellent analysis. There is little doubt in my mind that water provides a strong NEGATIVE feedback to the GHE or indeed any increase in global energy input.
There now seems to be a universal view that water, being a greenhouse gas (GHG) serves to warm the planet. The statement crops up repeatedly both in alarmist and sceptical literature.
In fact the opposite is true in spite of it being a GHG.
This is due to the evaporation process which occurs at constant temperature giving the Planck sensitivity coefficient a value of Zero. Thus any energy absorbed by water does NOT result in a temperature increase as would be the case with other GHGs.
Further the process serves to move this absorbed energy up through the atmosphere for dissipation both in the atmosphere and space to enable a global energy balance.
The assumption that water tends to warm the planet due to its POSITIVE feedback is a fundamental FLAW in the IPCC logic.
This article started about TPW and then went on with relative humidity at the 300,400,500,600, and 700 levels. What’s up with not mentioning what’s happened between the 700 level and the surface?
I see “The Science” of CO2-caused Climate Change is still not settled.
We should not be spending Trillions of dollars on windmills and solar and giving up fossil fuels based on such uncertainty.
Surely the changes in water vapour alters the amounts of solar near infrared absorption at various altitudes? Less water vapour in the upper atmosphere would reduce the NIR absorption there, and more water vapour in the lower atmosphere would increase the NIR absorption there.
I would like to suggest to the Climate Science education community that the first sentence, at the first lecture, on the first day of a course should be:
“It’s the water, stupid!”
That way, the students might evolve into scientists that question everything they’re told, instead of parroting the almost unhinged rantings of those who choose to believe that CO2 is the climate’s control knob.
One especially egregious notion that deserves to be immediately skewered by some high school-level science is the notion that “the atmosphere, poisoned by that dreaded gas, is warming the oceans and making them rise”.
Oh, really? Perhaps those who believe that should consider the following: a cubic metre of water – which covers 70% of the earth – contains more than 4800 times as much heat as a cubic metre of air. On average, the sea is at a temperature 2C higher than the air above it, therefore, according to fundamental thermodynamics, the direction of heat transfer is almost invariably from water to air. Every meteorologist knows this, but it seems climate scientists don’t, or at least choose to ignore it. Even in the rarer circumstances of temperature inversions, how much heat could the air hope to transfer to the sea, given that gases are piss-poor heat radiators at low temperature differences and little better at conducting heat?
I propose that every competent, non-ideological science teacher should get his 16-year old numerate students to do this exercise for themselves, and see what a crock this whole business is. For further disenchantment with climastrology they could then do the same exercise with radiation. Even allowing for the fatuous belief that “it’s the backradiation of 333W/m2 doing the warming”, since most commentators don’t even realise that this is simply a radiance temperature, and not a measure of heat transfer except to a sink at 0K, if they do the numbers and see that at 333 joules/sec the air parcel would lose 1C of temperature every 3 seconds, and very quickly stop transferring, having achieved an unmeasurable heating effect on the water.
Only the sun has the power to heat the sea, and it’s time the world woke up to this simple fact. (It’s also the principal factor in melting ice, but that’s for another time).
Some very good and fundamental comments here. Thanks I could query some details but that’s science is it not? The educational system indeed needs a good shake up as it has a lot to answer for.
Where is Miskolczi in all this discussion.
My “go to” graph on the climate fraud:
Note that consistent with this graph, the relative humidity at 300 and 400 mb is because we moved from a deep La Nina to a strong El Nino. Miskolczi’s graph where water column spikes is consistent with El Nino’s and volcanic eruptions!
Where is Miskolczi in all this discussion?
My “go to” graph on the climate fraud:
Note that consistent with this graph, the relative humidity at 300 and 400 mb is because we moved from a deep La Nina to a strong El Nino. Miskolczi’s graph where water column spikes is consistent with El Nino’s and volcanic eruptions!
Show your work on the 4800 claim.
Specific heat of air is 1kJ per kg.
Specific heat of seawater is 4kJ per kg.
By mass, seawater will change temperature 1/4 as much as the air above changes.
By volume, density of seawater is 800 times greater than air at the surface.
800 times 4 is 3200
To raise one cubic meter of seawater by 1 kelvin requires 3200 times more energy than the air above.
You’re right – I chose to use volume rather than weight in my calculations, because radiative transfer from a surface is always expressed per square metre, and I foolishly used someone else’s dodgy specific heat figure for air in my conversion.
Therefore, heat content of Cubic metre of water at 15C: 1000kg x 4.184kjoules/kg*K x 288K=1.205 million kilojoules.
1 cubic metre of air at 15C: 1.225kg x 1.005kjoules/kg*K x 288 = 355kjoules
So, only 3,394 times the heat content: that is, a cubic metre of water contains the same heat as a metre square column of air 3,394 metres high. Hmm, but at that height, the air is going to be at least 16K cooler. So, lets just round up to 3,400, shall we, while we consider how much heat is available to be transferred downwards from this column into the water, which is almost always at a higher temperature and prone to doing a bit of heat dumping of its own down this largely one-way street.
Yet another factor that needs to be borne in mind is that if you look up any aspect of radiative physics, one of the first words one encounters is “surface”. Because surfaces of solids and liquids (and even water droplets and small particles) can emanate substantial radiation, with a host of tightly packed atoms/molecules standing behind the surface ready to re-equilibrate any energy lost to cooler sources.
Gases? Not so much. Radiative emission from gases only becomes significant at high temperature differences, such as in furnaces, and at the upper levels of the atmosphere, where CO2 is able to dump the modest heat it still contains at -50C to the horror of space at -270C.
The notion of backradiation as a key plank of the AGW scare is an insidious piece of nonsense that has received far too much attention. After all, we live in a world of backradiation, where everything we know is radiating to everything else in its field of view; and energy transfer from warmer to colder substances is happening continuously in the inexorable quest for equilibrium. The exception is space, the closest thing we have to absolute zero, and of which there is rather a lot. Only space allows significant radiative transfer from gases. In the modest temperatures on earth and above it, the greenhouse gases can only absorb a bit of IR energy and move it around via their fellow atmospheric constituents (N2, O2, H2O), mostly upwards.
Specific heat capacity of SEAWATER is 4.005 kilojoules per kilogram K.
Density of SEAWATER is 1026 kilograms per cubic meter.
1026 times 4.005 is 4109.
You don’t need to multiply by 288 because the temperature INTERVAL for both air and seawater is 1.000 Kelvins.
Air
1.225 times 1.005 equals 1.231
4109 divided by 1.231 is about 3338
Values from engineering toolbox
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/sea-water-properties-d_840.html