Posted on 01/28/2010 9:46:21 PM PST by neverdem
Mysterious changes in the stratosphere may have offset greenhouse effect.
A 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 ...
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 to 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% compared to estimates neglecting this change. These findings show that stratospheric water vapor represents an important driver of decadal global surface climate change.
The cat's out of the bag, so now these mutts are hedging their bets?
This is obvioulsy not an apology for getting it wrong. This is a “We found something unexpected but Globul warming is still real” article.
It is only unexpected however if their models are not correct and/or don’t/can’t allow for miriade of possibilities and remedies that the planet and it’s atmosphere has!
Mel
How about that.
The element that most likely regulates the world’s temperature (allowing increases) may also allow decreases.
Who’da thunk it?
(All those who criticized climate models that do not allow for atmospheric moisture, since it is the least understood of climatic controllers, though recent evidence indicates that it also may be a very powerful temperature control.)
Maybe they should just talk to Karl Rove. I heard he has a weather machine.
bttt
EPA will now declare water to be a pollutant. Thus if you pee, you will be taxed!!!! Along with exhaling of course.
To reduce your tax burden H&R Block will give bladder control courses. Pee less, pay less.
I believe nothing these prostitutes peddle. Liars and self-serving con-artists all!
They want to “create” a new way and don’t give a damn how they get there. Politicians are taking over the Teslas, Westinghouse’s, and Edisons of our age. The scientists should be quite alarmed.
Basically, the people creating these models don’t have a clue what’s really going on.
The climate on earth is very complex. We don’t know all the factors that contribute, and we don’t know to what extent each contributes. So, none of the models could possibly be right.
Yet, these PhD’s want to spend billions of our dollars to try to control something that they don’t understand.
And this article repeats the nonsense that the past decade was the warmest in history. They completely ignore the medieval warming period, because it doesn’t fit with their world view that change is bad, and that man is causing the bad change.
“report a mysterious 10% drop in water vapour in the stratosphere since 2000 could have offset the expected warming”
Mysterious? This is science? “Mysterious” must mean that it was not specified by Al Gore, therefore how could we possibly have known?
Where I live, if you pee (and flush), you are taxed right now. And the killer is there is actually a specific school tax on sewers. There is a “school tax” on virtually everything here. I should be surrounded by an army of young geniuses.
This wouldn’t surprise me. The earth probably has wonderful buffering mechanisms to prevent wild swings in global temperatures. I mean, if that was not the case, we wouldn’t be here.
That is a huge fallacy of the warming “faithers” who believe in AGW without any scientific basis behind it. If CO2 really accerated planetary warming, and if warming releases CO2, the earth’s temperature would spiral ever upward with no intermediate cooling trend.
I’ve no clue the mechanisms, but that the earth has buffer mechanisms to prevent huge temperature swings in either direction, would not surprise me in the least.
Everybody “knows” we are between ice ages. The political banter to kill personal wealth continues until submission is achieved. Global Warming is a fad that the left will always subscribe to. We will not be here when the world freezes up. They are opportunists with aspirations of mythical greatness.
Perhaps that flaming ball of thermonuclear fire in the sky, also known as the sun, might have a bit to do with the temperature here on earth.
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Unexpected and unprecedented.
These warmists are like a cur dog shaking a rat. They just can’t let go of their dead ideas.
Let’s see, isn’t the “mysterious” aspect of this phenomenon quite enough to indicate that all the AGW models to date are b.s.???
b/c since *they* did not already predict and account for this effect (assuming it is being accurately described now, more or less), all of the AGW discussions and modeling to date have have been based upon a totally inadequate grasp of basic phenomena in the earth’s atmosphere..... and how does anyone think they NOW have a grasp on all of the myriad feedbacks, cycles, and complexities?
Move along. Nothing to see here. We have a consensus. The science is settled.
Damn
Even in this article the author insists on using Junk Science....he continues to support the reality of warming when it doesn’t exist.
Someone is paying these folks off.....my wager.
And I bet they aren’t nice either.
;-)
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