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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 CO2 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.
While mostly flat the 925mb (to about 2,500 feet) layer has seen a rise over the last decade (slightly exceeding the 1950s)
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.
700mb (about 10,000 feet) down and flat.
600mb (under 15,000 feet or about the height of Colorado's tallest peaks) Well down and flat.
500mb (about 18,000 feet) Same again.
400mb (under 25,000 feet) Falling.
300mb (30,000 feet or just above Mt. Everest) A little quirky but falling.
So, what do these time series tell us?
To begin with, what atmospheric moistening is believed to have occurred is at altitudes basically well below the surface altitudes of the major ice shields, Greenland and the East & West Antarctic and much of Earth's land surfaces.
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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