Sentences with phrase «like water vapor concentrations»

Specifically, as global temperatures have steadily increased at their fastest rates in millions of years, it's directly affected things like water vapor concentrations, clouds, precipitation patterns, and stream flow patterns, which are all related to the water cycle.

Not exact matches

With JWST, a few hours of integration time will be enough to detect Earth - like levels of water vapor, molecular oxygen, carbon dioxide and other generic biosignatures on planets orbiting a white dwarf; beyond that, observing the same planet for up to 1.7 days will be enough to detect the two CFCs in concentrations of 750 parts per trillion, or 10 times greater than on Earth.

[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?)

The study, described in an article today in The Times, finds that poorly understood variations in water vapor concentrations in the stratosphere were probably responsible for a substantial wedge of the powerful warming trend in the 1990s and a substantial portion of «the flattening of global average temperatures since 2000 ″ (to anyone who hates talk of plateaus and the like, those are the authors» words, not mine).