Observations and climate model results confirm that human-induced warming of the planet is having a pronounced effect on the atmosphere’s total moisture content…”When you heat the planet, you increase the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture,” said Benjamin Santer, from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
“The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per cubic meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”
Using 22 different computer models of the climate system and measurements from the satellite-based Special Sensor Microwave Imager, atmospheric scientists from LLNL and eight other international research centers have shown that the recent increase in moisture content over the bulk of the world’s oceans is not due to solar forcing or gradual recovery from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. The primary driver of this ‘atmospheric moistening’ is the increase in carbon dioxide caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
“This is the first identification of a human fingerprint on the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere,” Santer said.
I’ll leave to you to guess which finger it is.
Aside from my smartass remark, work your way through the questions discussed at the end of the article. Of particular note is “atmospheric moisture content is one of the large-scale environmental conditions that influences the genesis and development of hurricanes” – a dialectical change witnessed just the other week with Hurricane Humberto.
Models are based on historical data. Change the variables and forecasts will become less accurate. If these changes are occurring this rapidly, events will be difficult to predict. No one was around to collect data at the end of the last great ice age. There will be a lot of surprises, most unfavorable to humans.
I don’t care how many computer models are used: COMPUTER MODELS ARE NOT PROOF
Save the Earth — Execute half of the population. If you volunteer to die to save the earth, we’ll pay your surviving family in carbon credits.
More warming, more moisture, more clouds, more reflected sunlight.
MIT… http://web.mit.edu/cgcs/www/clouds.html
“Concern about global change has focused attention on the temperature of the Earth’s surface-or, equivalently, the heat budget of the Earth’s surface. The effect of clouds on this heat budget is immense.”
“In existing climate models about one third of the predicted warming due to increasing CO2 arises because of the predicted cloud changes. These predictions, however, are highly speculative because none of the models include interactive cloud physics.”
“Clearly, without a proper treatment of both layer clouds and convection, model predictions of climate are uncertain. Cloud effects are so much larger than the anticipated effects of added greenhouse gases, that small changes in the cloud picture can easily alter predictions of global warming. In addition, existing methods of representing convection and clouds are crude, and, in some cases, can be shown even to be qualitatively incorrect.”
Global warming stopped being a scientific study when it became political and a marketing tool. Global warming is policy now and no other discussions are accepted. Shame huh?
Cheers
Someone mail me a penny postcard when comments here get round to reading the article and discussing the science.
They are basing their conclusion on a theory, namely that humans have caused global warming. I don’t deny that we are a factor, but how much of a factor has NOT been proven. Many, many areas of the world are experiencing drought, including the US southeast coast. In Ontario we just went through a summer of cool dry nights, and cool to hot dry days with little rain. 30-40 years ago the heat and humidity was unbearable at night.
“The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per cubic meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”
I just let out a little moisture while reading this post.
‘Scuse me.
Save the Earth — Execute half of the population. If you volunteer to die to save the earth, we’ll pay your surviving family in carbon credits.
Sorry, I missed the part where you explained exactly what it is that maintaining current carbon emissions does for you. Or are you just in it for the money?
Note that these scientists were very careful to account for solar forcing, Pinatubo, and other sources. This is very typical of such studies and widely ignored by the climate skeptics, most especially those funded by Exxon/Mobil and then quoted and requoted by many of the posters here.
Don’t drink the corporate Kool-Aid guys. It really is us.
We can only hope against hope that the increased moisture might also have the side effect of increased clouds. Perhaps the increased albedo will help a bit. But, let’s not bet our lives on it.
The changes we need to make in our everyday lives to combat global warming are nearly painless. They save us money and have no effect on our quality of life, except for CFLs, which give much nicer looking light than the dingy yellow of incandescents and even halogens to which we’ve become accustomed.
On a larger scale, renewables provide just as good electricity as coal and are quite economical now. Wind, solar, and tidal can provide much if not all of the energy we need. Electric cars work. We’re almost there with so little effect on our daily lives. Why are we fighting the changes we know we need?
Are we really afraid to let new industry flourish and replace old? Are we really afraid to give our business to new companies like Tesla Motors instead of old ones like GM that threw their new technology away? Are we afraid of what might happen to the health industry if we no longer had 70-130,000 people in the U.S. alone dying prematurely of air pollution?
#3 – Vince,
Can I get extra credits for my decision not to reproduce?
Still dry here in Utah. Looks like we have a long way to go.
#5 – moss,
Here’s the link to the full article. I’m just about to start reading the full source now.
They seem to be reversing cause and effect. They say the increased water vapor in the atmosphere is the result of global warming, caused by man.
But the most significant green house gas is… water vapor. The 2nd most significant is… methane. CO2 is actually third. But since CO2 is the only gas that we can link directly to human involvement, that’s the one everyone talks about.
So increased water vapor is NOT the result of global warming. It is the primary cause of global warming. The increase in water vapor is probably the result of human involvement, but nobody seems to know how or why.
#10 – James Hill,
Still dry here in Utah. Looks like we have a long way to go.
Yes. Assuming we care only about your backyard. For those of us that think a tad more globally, however, we might note that Utah is not in fact the entire planet.
#6 – JimR,
I think that quote must be from a paraphrasing of the actual peer reviewed article. Here’s the more accurate quote of the scientists. It is stated a bit more strongly than that.
Data from the satellite-based Special Sensor Microwave Imager
(SSM/I) show that the total atmospheric moisture content over
oceans has increased by 0.41 kg/m2 per decade since 1988. Results from current climate models indicate that water vapor increases of this magnitude cannot be explained by climate noise alone. In a formal detection and attribution analysis using the pooled results from 22 different climate models, the simulated ‘‘fingerprint’’
pattern of anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor is
identifiable with high statistical confidence in the SSM/I data.
Experiments in which forcing factors are varied individually suggest
that this fingerprint ‘‘match’’ is primarily due to human caused
increases in greenhouse gases and not to solar forcing or
recovery from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Our findings
provide preliminary evidence of an emerging anthropogenic signal
in the moisture content of earth’s atmosphere.
Of course the atmosphere is getting muchly more moisterer. Look at all the reality TV shows that are steaming piles and then calculate all the steam coming off of them.
Scott, if renewables are so economical, why does Xcel want to charge me more for wind power than regular power?
Besides, I think you’re trying to deny future generations a better climate that the current one: http://tinyurl.com/2ofv2k
Doesn’t anyone have a problem with using data from only a 20 year period when we are talking about a x-million year old ecosystem?
Hell, even if the Baptists are right we are only talking about 0.3% of the earth’s exsistance.
#9 – ‘Wind, solar, and tidal can provide much if not all of the energy we need.’ Not without a tremendous cost and use (and destruction) of land space. The level of technology isn’t there. Nuclear power is the only thing close to supplying enough juice right now AND has low emissions.
‘Electric cars work.’ What do you mean ‘work’? Yes, it goes down the road & mileage is getting better between charges. But it takes more energy and pollution to build electric cars, especially on a large scale. Not to mention that we don’t even have recycling method for these types of vehicles and their components. Good luck getting RoHS compliant electric car anytime soon as well. Lastly, how many solar & wind power plants do we need to build to supply enough power to millions of electric cars chargings?
There’s got to be a better way. A better, cleaner fuel for now why we research and devleop better ideas for the future.
Wait until Krakatoa erupts that will mess things up right well.
Look at a map of Indonesia and follow the line of big Earthquakes on Sumatra from 2005 (tsunami) to just the other week….its like a fuse burning heading directly to Krakatoa. Shiiiiiiiiiit! Run for your lives!
Cheers
When is one of the more fringe groups going to come out and say our mere existence is detrimental to the Earth, ala Twelve Monkeys? There’s already a book out showing the beauty of an Earth without Humans, Life after Man, by Alan Weisman. I wonder when groups will start coming together for the purpose of radical human culling, or outright extiction for the purpose of saving the environment.?
EDIT: Weisman’s book is actually called “The World without Us”. Sorry for the error.
I read the article. I used their conclusion statement from the article to keep my post short.
1) they only have 19 years of data
2) they have a biased objective to support their claims of human cause
3) the bias shows in the article (i haven’t read the actual report)
4) If independent reviews weren’t damned with such religious fervor, more scientists would be willing to put the effort into doing actual experimental science to prove or disprove the THEORY presented, rather than rely on computer generated modeling… which can at best ONLY regurgitate a simulation of a possibility, from human selected input data, current human knowledge, and human biases.
m,op#16, exactly. “per decade since 1988″… Two points is not a trend, people.
Strangely though, the increase of .41 kg/m^2 isn’t the news the article is presenting. That increase is pretty much taken as given. The paper uses models to compare the increase found against various estimates of causes, and determines that the data matches the human causes model best. No real description of the models, or how they are built.
I also wonder how big a change this is. Anyone know what the actual moisture content is? .41 is a big increase if the standard measurement is 1 kg/m^2, but not so much if it’s 100 kg/m^2
You would think that increased water vapour in the air over the oceans would cause increased rainfall when that air crossed over land, but that’s not what’s happening…
link to map
per square meter? Most places air is measured as a volume.
#15 – iGW,
Scott, if renewables are so economical, why does Xcel want to charge me more for wind power than regular power?
Because we hugely subsidize the sources of which you are fond. If we stop giving corporate welfare for destroying the planet, you’ll find that the actual costs of wind, solar, and tidal, are in line with other sources and much cheaper than nuclear.
Further, if we begin to assess the damage to the nation from other sources, the renewables become dramatically cheaper. For example, if we include the costs of human life and hundreds of billions of dollars in the Iraq war, as part of the cost of oil, we begin to see the huge costs there. We can also begin to look at things like the amount of money we must spend to defend ourselves from terrorists armed with devices funded by oil money.
If we look at coal it gets really bad for different reasons. What is the value of all of the mountains being removed in coal mining? What is the value of human and animal life taken by the mercury it spews?
Besides, I think you’re trying to deny future generations a better climate that the current one:
OK, so to paraphrase this wonderful article you posted. A single scientist in a political position from NASA has begun to question aspects of global warming. All of the other scientists at NASA can’t believe the crap he’s blowing out of his ass. Scientists outside of NASA are equally outraged. So, your silly assed point was what again?
I just wet my pants.
All the people supporting limits on greenhouse gas emissions, you should be cheering for war with Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc, as wars for oil will send oil prices skyrocketing, and greenhouse gas emissions will drop. The US has actually lowered its emissions the last few years.
To save the planet, you must drop the bombs!
#19 – It’s already there: http://www.vhemt.org/index.htm
The Misanthropic One has said he’s a member. At least VHEMT is voluntary.
>>Global warming is policy now
Yeah, kinda like that nasty theory of evolution. Damned scientists; they take all the fun out of everything.
Nice to see 2 or 3 people actually reading stuff and commenting on research. One of the folks I get to discuss things like this with – in the real world – got his Doctorate on El Nino and similar phenomenon – so, we’ve both been waiting to catch this report from LL.
Yes, because it confirms processes logical to follow on what’s already been determined about global warming. No surprises. Including the head-in-the-sand brigade.