Sentences with phrase «co2 than water vapor»

I'm trying to understand the reasoning for giving more weight to the impact of CO2 than water vapor.

Not exact matches

To heat that boiler, the damp, crumbly brown coal known as lignite — which is even more polluting than the harder black anthracite variety — burns in the presence of pure oxygen, a process known as oxyfuel, releasing as waste both water vapor and that more notorious greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2).

CO2 is no more a feedback than water vapor, look at the ice core data.

That would suggest CO2 is far from «weak», however, I would suggest that it is no more important than water vapor in the role it plays in past ice cycles (look at the numbers!).

[1] CO2 absorbs IR, is the main GHG, human emissions are increasing its concentration in the atmosphere, raising temperatures globally; the second GHG, water vapor, exists in equilibrium with water / ice, would precipitate out if not for the CO2, so acts as a feedback; since the oceans cover so much of the planet, water is a large positive feedback; melting snow and ice as the atmosphere warms decreases albedo, another positive feedback, biased toward the poles, which gives larger polar warming than the global average; decreasing the temperature gradient from the equator to the poles is reducing the driving forces for the jetstream; the jetstream's meanders are increasing in amplitude and slowing, just like the lower Missippi River where its driving gradient decreases; the larger slower meanders increase the amplitude and duration of blocking highs, increasing drought and extreme temperatures — and 30,000 + Europeans and 5,000 plus Russians die, and the US corn crop, Russian wheat crop, and Aussie wildland fire protection fails — or extreme rainfall floods the US, France, Pakistan, Thailand (driving up prices for disk drives — hows that for unexpected adverse impacts from AGW?)

As the atmosphere warms it can hold more water; that additional water vapor provides more of the warming than is directl caused by CO2.

CO2, in contrast, strongly absorbs wavelengths > 13 times longer than O2 does, as well as other bands around 2 - 3 and 4 - 5 microns, while water vapor absorbs strongly from around 5 - 8 microns.

True, CO2 levels are higher than in most of our past but water vapor, not CO2, is the major «greenhouse» driver.

WRT water vapor amplification, I suspect that the basic (radiative only) amplifying effect of water vapor, which is something less than a factor of 2 over the CO2 - only effect of ~ 1.2 C, IIRC, will be close to the same across a range of average surface temperatures.

Bye the way physics guy, increased CO2 warms earth some, leading to more water vapor which has a greater greenhouse effect than the CO2 as such.

> CO2 is less of a GHG than water vapor OK so far > which it replaces Citation needed!

Now adding back the CO2 will have a larger magnitude of forcing than the initial removal because there is much less water vapor, and the water vapor feedback in terms of W / m2 will be smaller in magnitude because of the overlap with CO2.

Warming must occur below the tropopause to increase the net LW flux out of the tropopause to balance the tropopause - level forcing; there is some feedback at that point as the stratosphere is «forced» by the fraction of that increase which it absorbs, and a fraction of that is transfered back to the tropopause level — for an optically thick stratosphere that could be significant, but I think it may be minor for the Earth as it is (while CO2 optical thickness of the stratosphere alone is large near the center of the band, most of the wavelengths in which the stratosphere is not transparent have a more moderate optical thickness on the order of 1 (mainly from stratospheric water vapor; stratospheric ozone makes a contribution over a narrow wavelength band, reaching somewhat larger optical thickness than stratospheric water vapor)(in the limit of an optically thin stratosphere at most wavelengths where the stratosphere is not transparent, changes in the net flux out of the stratosphere caused by stratospheric warming or cooling will tend to be evenly split between upward at TOA and downward at the tropopause; with greater optically thickness over a larger fraction of optically - significant wavelengths, the distribution of warming or cooling within the stratosphere will affect how such a change is distributed, and it would even be possible for stratospheric adjustment to have opposite effects on the downward flux at the tropopause and the upward flux at TOA).

If a doubling of CO2 resulted in a temperature increase of approximately 1 K before any non-Planck feedbacks (before water vapor, etc.), then assuming the same climate sensitivity to the total GHE, removing the whole GHE would result in about a (setting the TOA / tropopause distinction aside, as it is relatively small relative to the 155 W / m2 value) 155/3.7 * 1 K ~ = 42 K. Which is a bit more than 32 or 33 K, though I'm not surprised by the difference.

QUESTION: Why on common sense grounds is CO2 a more significant driver of the greenhouse effect & warming than water vapor?

If CO2 in the Anthropocene atmosphere contributes to re-vegetating currently arid areas as it did post-LGM, we should expect an even greater warming feedback from CO2 than is assumed from water vapor and albedo feedbacks, due to decreased global dust - induced albedo and increased water vapor from transpiration over increased vegetated area.

(CO2 band is near the peak wavelength, water vapor bands significant in stratosphere for wavelengths longer than ~ 25 microns and between ~ 5.5 and 7 microns, and ozone between ~ 9.5 and 10 microns, and CH4 and N2O between ~ 7.5 and 8 microns — Hartmann p. 44 and 48, rough est. from graphs; signficant stratospheric transparency remains in several of those bands except near the peak of the CO2 band, but especially water vapor from 25 to 50 microns.)

But in the end, all of the water vapor adds somewhat less than 1.8 C to the original 1.2 C for a CO2 doubling in the fast feedbacks.

Scientific predictions of climate change for the next couple centuries, when we already know that CO2 and water vapor will be high, involves much less uncertainty than prediction of climate change when CO2 and water vapor are low.

Arrhenius spent a number of years trying to overcome this little obstacle before finally saying that the impact of CO2 was considerable less than his first estimate and mentioning 1.6 (2.1) with water vapor was more likely.

They were able to put and keep the focus on CO2 so that most people still don't know it is less than 4 percent of the greenhouse gases or even that water vapor is the most abundant and important greenhouse gas.

In 1896 Swedish chemist and Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius used Langley's bolometer to measure the heat from the Moon at various altitudes above the horizon in order to estimate the dependence of atmospheric heat trapping on amount of water vapor and CO2 along the line of sight to the Moon, a much longer path near the horizon than at 45 degrees.

He found that gases and vapors whose molecules had three or more atoms, such as water vapor and CO2, absorbed much more of the thermal radiation passing through the tube than did two - atom molecules such as oxygen and nitrogen.

You appear to have your knickers all twisted about the generally accepted greenhouse theory, which states that GH gases (primarily water vapor, plus some smaller ones, such as CO2) keep our planet warmer than it would otherwise be if they were not in our atmosphere.

Water vapor itself being more effective heat retainer than CO2.

CO2 is absorbing other wavelength than water vapor, so the effects do add up I imagine.

And trying to argue that water vapor is innocuous because it is removed from the atmosphere much faster than CO2, doesn't wash, because if that were true on a climate time scale, then earth would be a frozen ball.

Too much CO2 could even cool it, due to increased proportions of CO2 which is less effective than water vapor as a heat - trapping gas.

By that measure, total column CO2 is ~ 3 meters or ~ 3 atm m. Engineering heat transfer calculations often use standard pressure times path length to calculate emissivities of CO2 and water vapor in furnaces from tables or graphs rather than having to do full RT calculations.

If you consider that the Earth is also about 2 / 3rds cloud covered and any CO2 or other GHG absorption would not matter because the clouds would be absorbing the energy anyway, over 90 % of the GHE is from water vapor and / or clouds and less than 10 % is from CO2 and other GHGs.

Water vapor effect on climate measured New data says southern ocean still absorbing CO2 Ocean acidifying faster than expected Missing radiation signature points to thinning Tibetan glaciers «Cash for Clunkers» to get -LSB-...]

We have far more data about increasing CO2 than increasing water vapor, hence if we want to test this hypothesis by looking for a correlation between global warming and the combined effect of CO2 and H2O, a correlation with CO2 alone is more feasible than one involving water vapour.

Even alarmists think water vapor is more important given the bogus claim that water vapor enhancement is a larger influence on the surface temperature than the original effect of a CO2 increase.

CO2 is indeed a greenhouse gas, but much less important than the major greenhouse gas, water vapor (H2O) and clouds.

In terms of GHG effect, water vapor is a considerably larger factor, much more powerful than CO2.

This is in addition to there being a much higher partial pressure of water vapor (up to 2.5 %) in the atmosphere than that of CO2 (400ppm which varies with height) It should also be noted that the absorptivity and emissivity of liquid water is close to unity across the full range of wavelength from UV to microwaves.

That means the emission probability for excited CO2 (and water vapor) is significantly greater than zero and explains the observed emission spectra which show strong CO2 (and water vapor) emission spectral features rather than the continuum emission that would be expected if nitrogen emission dominated.

The heat capacity of water when it changes from liquid to vapor or vice versa is 50,000 times greater than that of the CO2 in a volume of atmosphere with 1 % H20 and 500 ppm CO2.

If CO2 does not directly control water vapor, then he is less than clear in calling it a thermostat.

And just as CO2 makes the oceans warmer than otherwise, so does water vapor.

At 17 km for a tropical atmosphere the amount of water vapor in a given volume is less than 1 % as much as the amount of CO2.

Note that water vapor is a vastly greater greenhouse gas than CO2.

They thought the increased evaporation from CO2 would make things even warmer since water vapor is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.

We know further, from laboratory work, that CO2, and more importantly water vapor, in the atmosphere serves to keep the Earth warmer than it would be in their absence.

In my opinion, these images clearly show that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere is totally insignificant, mainly because the natural variation in water vapor is so much larger than the amount of CO2 added by humans.

The argument which say there would a more dramatic effect, would include the idea that if one had such increase in CO2, one would get also get a significant increase in water vapor and such increase in water vapor is considered a much stronger effect than merely increase in CO2.

Without GHG's like water vapor and CO2 the surface of the Earth would cool so effectively by IR radiation that the surface would be tens of degrees colder than it's now (how much depends on what the albedo of the cold earth would turn out to be).

Carbon dioxide is the biggest long - term human - generated contributor to global warming — other molecules like methane and water vapor are also greenhouse gases, but their levels are more or less constant; the amount of anthropogenic CO2 has been going up steadily for decades and is higher now than in any point in human history.

The IPCC, its models, and the climate establishment insist warming will be more than this because the warming will cause an increase in atmospheric water vapor (the major greenhouse gas) which will amplify the CO2 - caused warming, a net positive feedback.

Water vapor is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 and its concentration in the air is between 25 and 50 times greater than CO2.