Increase In Atmospheric Moisture Tied To Human Activities
”When you heat the planet, you increase the
ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture”
Observations and climate model results confirm that human-induced warming of the planet is having a pronounced effect on the atmosphere’s total moisture content…”When you heat the planet, you increase the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture,” said Benjamin Santer, from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
“The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per cubic meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”
Using 22 different computer models of the climate system and measurements from the satellite-based Special Sensor Microwave Imager, atmospheric scientists from LLNL and eight other international research centers have shown that the recent increase in moisture content over the bulk of the world’s oceans is not due to solar forcing or gradual recovery from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. The primary driver of this ‘atmospheric moistening’ is the increase in carbon dioxide caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
“This is the first identification of a human fingerprint on the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere,” Santer said.
I’ll leave to you to guess which finger it is.
Aside from my smartass remark, work your way through the questions discussed at the end of the article. Of particular note is “atmospheric moisture content is one of the large-scale environmental conditions that influences the genesis and development of hurricanes” - a dialectical change witnessed just the other week with Hurricane Humberto.
Posted: Thu - September 20, 2007 at 06:05 AM