La Nina continues to dominate global temperatures up to June 2022 bringing cold temperatures to Eastern Australia. The global May temperature (anomaly) was 0.80C and June was 0.91 C. The data used are GHCNV4 and HADSST4 and the method is always based on an integration using Spherical Triangulation.
3D view of temperature anomalies for June 2022 showing a continuing La Nina.
The annual temperature average for 2022 after the first six months is 0.85C which is about 0.1C below the peak year of 2020.
The monthly data updated to June is shown below
The full temperature data back to 1850 is available here.
NASA/RSS measured the average global water vapor (TPW) level and reported it monthly Jan 1988 to Dec 2021. A graph of their data shows an increase of 1.44% per decade. Average global temperature has been measured and reported monthly by several agencies. Using the saturation vapor pressure vs temperature curve for water and the reported temperatures It is not difficult to calculate what the water vapor should be from just temperature increase. Comparison of the measured WV with the calculated WV shows that WV has been increasing substantially faster than possible from just temperature increase. This demonstrates that WV increase was not a result of Temperature increase from CO2 increase. More at https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com
Interesting.
Water vapour has a relatively larger greenhouse effect than CO2, but it can also has a cooling effect once it condenses out as clouds. In the tropics clouds limit maximum temperatures as can be seen from any satellite image.
A warmer world will be a wetter world. The 2/3 area coverage of oceans are the ultimate thermostat.
Dan Pangburn is making an absurdly misguided claim. The heat of vaporization of H2O is 0.42eV and you will find that a 1C change will raise the H2O partial pressure about 5%, which isn’t that different than that measured (he quotes 1.44% per decade since 1988). Quite a hill — more like a mound — to die on.
The heat of vaporization (enthalpy change) varies with temperature. Apparently you have been “absurdly misguided”. Valid information is at the link. Note especially Fig 4.
Not over that small a range. This is some stupid sh!t
Your Aug 8 comment reveals that you either did not look at or did not understand Fig 4.
I don’t really understand the term saturation vapor pressure, but if global water vapor has been increasing faster than what you’d expect from the increase in global temperature, wouldn’t that mean that relative humidity has increased?
Not necessarily. It would mean that specific humidity has increased, and it has. Why don’t you look up what ‘saturation vapor pressure’ means?
Paraphrasing…. If it’s true that specific humidity has increased faster than what you’d expect from the increase in global temperature, wouldn’t that create an increase in RH? I’m asking because, according to this study, RH has actually decreased.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-investigating-climate-changes-humidity-paradox/
I have commented on this under the post: AR6 Climate “muddles”.
From Allan et al 2022. Global Changes in Water Vapor 1979-2020:
“Tropical ocean near-surface relative humidity in ERA5 decreases by more than 1% from 1979 to 2015 —“. “This is at odds with amip simulations which display a slight increase and small year to year variability in anomalies of order 0.5% RH.”
This decrease in RH can cause thinning of clouds and global warming. I have not seen anybody has made a calculation on this.
From Kate Millet on the Carbon Brief post:
“The slower warming of the oceans means that there has not been enough moisture evaporated into – and then held in – the air above the oceans to keep pace with the rising temperatures over land. This means that the air is not as saturated as it was and – as the chart below shows – relative humidity has decreased.”
So the changes in relative humidity is a global phenomenon, and not only linked to the tropics.
This statement in the carbonbrief.org reference is misleading. “According to the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, the air can generally hold around 7% more moisture for every 1C of temperature rise.” The CC equation relates the volume change to the enthalpy change at saturation; nothing more. The saturation vapor pressure vs temperature curve is a property of water; something that is measured, not calculated. There have been many curve fit approximations over the years but they are just that, curve fits. The 7% figure is a rough approximation. The correct value varies with temperature. It is the slope of the saturation vapor pressure vs temperature curve at a temperature divided by the saturation vapor pressure at that temperature. An area weighted value for the planet is 6.7%/C° which includes an estimate of the questionable effects of compounding. The un-compounded value for an average global temperature of 15 °C is 6.5%/C°
You’re arguing, “…. WV has been increasing substantially faster than possible from just temperature increase.”, and yet observations show the atmosphere has become less saturated with water vapor (decreasing RH).
And you don’t see a problem with this?
Perhaps you have been misled by the assertion that ‘water vapor increases about 7% per degree C’. This statement is misleading because the factor (7%) actually varies with temperature. The method of calculating it is given at Sect 4 of https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com. Fig 4 shows that the factor varies from about 6% to 12%. Note that the factor increases with decreasing temperature. This means that the accommodation for WV increases with altitude (lower temperature). When average global temperature increases, the specific humidity increases but the accommodation for humidity increases even more, so the relative humidity decreases.
Dan,
I’ve mentioned before that this is a really interesting idea, and IMO the most plausible alternative theory to CO2 being the main driver of GW. I’ve often wondered whether Earth would be warmer or cooler if entirely covered by ocean, and irrigation, etc, is a move in that direction, albeit very small.
That said, climate models show little net warming….
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae018
Of course they could be mistaken
From the article….
“Increases in water vapour greenhouse effect are small because additional vapour cannot reach the upper troposphere, and greenhouse-gas warming is outweighed by increases in reflectance from humidity-induced low cloud cover, leading to a near-zero or small cooling effect. Near-surface temperature decreases over land are implied even without evaporative cooling at the surface, due to cooling by low clouds and vapour-induced changes to the moist lapse rate. These results indicate that even large increases in anthropogenic water vapour emissions would have negligible warming effects on climate, but that possible negative RF may deserve more attention.”
Hmmm…..??
so let’s imagine that the oceans only covered 60% of the planet, and they ran a model to see what would happen if the oceans covered an additional 10%. Wouldn’t it show similar results as described above?
Which, if correct, means climate scientists could no longer claim that increased WV is a positive feedback loop to CO2 forcing.
Pangborn is laughably inept.