A loss of water vapour from the Earth's stratosphere may have been behind the last decade being cooler than expected.NASAPosted on 01/28/2010 9:46:21 PM PST by neverdem
Mysterious changes in the stratosphere may have offset greenhouse effect.
A loss of water vapour from the Earth's stratosphere may have been behind the last decade being cooler than expected.NASAA puzzling drop in the amount of water vapour high in the Earth's atmosphere is now on the list of possible culprits causing average global temperatures to flatten out over the past decade, despite ever-increasing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Although the decade spanning 2000 to 2009 ranks as the warmest on record, average temperatures largely levelled off following two decades of rapid increases. Researchers have previously eyed everything from the Sun and oceans to random variability in order to explain the pause, which sceptics have claimed shows that climate models are unreliable.
Now a team led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, report that a mysterious 10% drop in water vapour in the stratosphere — the atmospheric layer that sits 10-50 kilometres above Earth's surface — since 2000 could have offset the expected warming due to greenhouse gases by roughly 25%. Just as intriguingly, their model suggests that an increase in stratospheric water vapour might have boosted earlier warming by about 30% in the 1980s and 1990s. The team's work is published online by Science today1.
The effect on temperature is dominated by water vapour in the lower part of the stratosphere, which absorbs and radiates heat in much the same way as water molecules and other greenhouse gases do in the lower atmosphere. The drop in water vapour doesn't explain the entire decrease in the rate of warming, but it could contribute to it, says Susan Solomon, first author of the study and a NOAA scientist who co-chaired the...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Another good one from neverdem.
The Sun Also Flares - If we get hit with a once-in-a-century solar storm, we’re history. Check comment# 57's link.
Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
You’re welcome. Thanks for the compliment.
I do love how this newly discovered phenomenon is described by the author as “puzzling” and “mysterious”... and certainly not included in AGW climate models to date since no one seems to have known or even suspected that this could happen.......
yet this author (and presumably all of the Albore/Phil Jones claque) won’t even slow down a moment for this......
even though nothing they said in the ‘90s or even through the past decade could account at all for this
we’re supposed to entrust trillions and trillions of dollars, and so much more, to bozos who make it all up as they go
yes, you are the source of so many good threads and comments on FR! thank you
I’m flattered, but it’s just an argument about common sense, IMHO. The left defies common sense.
Odd that they should label a process that achieves their (fraudulently stated) goal of reducing rising temps, to "save the world as we know it" a culprit! LOL!
The monkey wrench in the money machine; the fly in the tube job lube; the sticking point on the way to the tipping point....
Except when, “unexpectedly” mile-thick glaciers cover half of North America. ;)
Dear me,when will they impose regulation on the tooth fairy?
gasp!you don’t think God made the earth with the capacity to heal itself..
Yes. You’d think that with the record high temps of the last decade that there’d be MORE of that most major greenhouse gas, water vapor, in the atmosphere, even in the stratosphere. Quite a quandry!
Amazing scientific discovery, ain’t it?
I’m a science dope, but even I KNOW that water might have something to do with it.
Very odd indeed ! Cognitive dissonance LOL. Thanx !
If this is the quality of rigorous science, then it is ironically amusing there is no mention of chemtrails.
I suppose HAARP has nothing to do with this.
/sar
So, now his fellow devotees at NASA have decided to pick on the Earth god and her daughter, the Rain!
This, BTW, is not science ~ it's a reflection of intellectual bankruptcy among weathermen and their funny little friends. Whereas your typical Christian weather fan, like Pat Robertson would be expected to keep his ideas about hurricanes to himself, non-Christians just run wild.
Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, but bifurcating and compartmentalizing one's religious thoughts, although demanded in Western science, is not necessarily going to happen with non-Western people.
Fur Shur you don't want to be caught with your PANTS ON THE FLOOR playing Cap & Trade at the behest of a Sun god devotee!
I've got Obama's belt right here ~ and someone should look deeply into why he doesn't want to send more rockets to the Moon. Does it have anything to do with the "sacred Crescent"?
Tesla, now there is a man that has been completely ripped off in terms of his historical mammoth influence on our daily lives. He should be a household name just as much (more so in my opinion) than Edison. He wasn’t smart, he was flipping insanely brilliant, off the freaking scale of genius. (Divinely so, is my guess)
I’ve always thought the climate was self regulating, to a degree.
Atmospheric moisture (water vapor) is 95% of the greenhouse gases. For the folks who still believe Karl Rove has a weather machine, he controls the sun beating down on the oceans of the world and pushing water vapor into the mix. Some of the ‘greenest’ technology yet developed produces no CO2, but lots of water vapor.
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