Sentences with phrase «atmospheric water vapor concentrations»

Furthermore, agreement is widespread that these changes may profoundly affect atmospheric water vapor concentrations, clouds, precipitation patterns, and runoff and stream flow patterns.

There is no convincing data to support the idea that CO2 level regulates atmospheric water vapor concentration.

Not exact matches

... The Earth's atmospheric methane concentration has increased by about 150 % since 1750, and it accounts for 20 % of the total radiative forcing from all of the long - lived and globally mixed greenhouse gases (these gases don't include water vapor which is by far the largest component of the greenhouse effect).

This provides a stable reference temperature structure for the fast feedback processes to operate and maintain the amounts of atmospheric water vapor and clouds at their quasi-equilibrium concentrations.

The specific humidity (i.e. «concentration» of water) is proportional to the ratio of partial pressure of water vapor to total atmospheric pressure.

The convective heat / mass transfer due to water dwarfs any radiative forcing; besides — just on optical depth alone, any re-radiated LWIR from atmospheric CO2 would be IMMEDIATELY absorbed by the much higher concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere (aka clouds!)

«What our study shows is that observed water vapor concentrations are high enough and temperatures are low enough over the U.S. in summertime to initiate the chemistry that is known to lead to ozone losses,» said Harvard atmospheric scientist David Wilmouth, one of the paper's co-authors, in an email.

Results of previously published empirical studies are used to demonstrate that the water vapor feedback mechanism, so important to the calculation of a significant climatic effect for a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration, appears to be counter-balanced by another feedback mechanism of opposite sign.

The parameterization is intended for application in large - scale atmospheric and cloud models that can predict 1) the supersaturation of water vapor, which requires a representation of vertical velocity on the cloud scale, and 2) concentrations of a variety of insoluble aerosol species.

The rate of heat loss to space is dependent on several factors, including cloudiness and the local atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and of water vapor.

Also, while we have good atmospheric measurements of other key greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, we have poor measurements of global water vapor, so it is not certain by how much atmospheric concentrations have risen in recent decades or centuries, though satellite measurements, combined with balloon data and some in - situ ground measurements indicate generally positive trends in global water vapor.»

Water vapor then reacts to this increased absorption, its concentration in air diminishes, its share of IR absorption goes down, and atmospheric transmittance is restored to its nominal 15 percent again.

3 Further complicating the response of the different atmospheric levels to increases in greenhouse gases are other processes such as those associated with changes in the concentration and distribution of atmospheric water vapor and clouds.

He deduced that the cooperation of these gases has to take the form of an optimal atmospheric transmittance window for infrared radiation, such that if the concentration of one gas, say carbon dioxide, varies and changes atmospheric transmittance, the other components, such as water vapor, will have to compensate for it by changing their concentrations.

For more than 10 years (I forgot how much more), upper tropospheric water vapor has not increased in response to significant increases in CO2 atmospheric concentrations.

However, because atmospheric concentrations of water vapor tend to be at most only a few percent of the amount of air (and usually much lower), they are both often expressed in units of grams of water vapor per kilogram of (moist or dry) air.

Note that this is only part of the story since, as far as we are aware, no one has yet investigated a counterintuitive parallel effect — condensation and precipitation will likely reduce the total lower atmospheric concentration of that ubiquitous greenhouse gas, water vapor, so increasing clear sky radiative cooling.

Since water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, the growth in its concentration caused by atmospheric warming exerts an additional forcing, causing temperature to rise further.

While it was true that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide had been increasing, he said, and had passed 400 parts per million, the dominant effect of water vapor had helped flatten the greenhouse effect, such that the rise of global surface temperatures had slowed significantly.