Article
 

An observationally based constraint on the water-vapor feedback

Public Deposited

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/articles/1z40kz41b

Descriptions

Attribute NameValues
Creator
Abstract
  • The increase in atmospheric concentrations of water vapor with global warming is a large positive feedback in the climate system. Thus, even relatively small errors in its magnitude can lead to large uncertainties in predicting climate response to anthropogenic forcing. This study incorporates observed variability of water vapor over 2002–2009 from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument into a radiative transfer scheme to provide constraints on this feedback. We derive a short-term water vapor feedback of 2.2 ± 0.4 Wm⁻²K⁻¹. Based on the relationship between feedback derived over short and long timescales in twentieth century simulations of 14 climate models, we estimate a range of likely values for the long-term twentieth century water vapor feedback of 1.9 to 2.8 Wm⁻²K⁻¹. We use the twentieth century simulations to determine the record length necessary for the short-term feedback to approach the long-term value. In most of the climate models we analyze, the short-term feedback converges to within 15% of its long-term value after 25 years, implying that a longer observational record is necessary to accurately estimate the water vapor feedback.
  • This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the author(s) and published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. on behalf of the American Geophysical Union. The published article can be found at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2169-8996.
  • Keywords: water vapor, climate feedback
License
Resource Type
DOI
Date Available
Date Issued
Citation
  • Gordon, N. D., A. K. Jonko, P. M. Forster, and K. M. Shell (2013), An observationally based constraint on the water-vapor feedback, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 118, 12,435–12,443. doi:10.1002/2013JD020184.
Journal Title
Journal Volume
  • 118
Journal Issue/Number
  • 22
Rights Statement
Funding Statement (additional comments about funding)
  • Support of this data set is provided by the Office of Science, U.S. Departmentof Energy. PF and NG were supported by NERC grant NE/E016189/1.NG was funded, in part, by the LLNL Institutional Postdoc Program.AJ was supported by NASA Grant NNX09AN92H and by the Office ofScience (BER), U.S. Department of Energy, and KS by the National ScienceFoundation under Grant ATM 0904092, by NASA Grant NNH08CC72C,and by NorthWest Research Associates Inc.
Publisher
Peer Reviewed
Language
Replaces

Relationships

Parents:

This work has no parents.

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details ShellKarenCEOASObservationallyBasedConstraint.pdf 2017-10-27 Public Download