The Boundary Line


The image above shows the humidity forecast for Wednesday night in the SE US. It was generated on NCAR’s WRF weather model, using GFS forecast boundary conditions. Note that southeast of the frontal boundary, H2O concentration in the atmosphere is very high – between 15,000 and 20,000 ppm (compared to 390 ppm of CO2.) Northwest of the frontal boundary H2O concentration is much lower – between 3,000 and 6,000 ppm, which is still 10-20X higher than the amount of CO2.

The convergence of cold dry air and warm moist air will produce violent weather along the frontal boundary.

H2O is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and it is also much more abundant and much more variable than CO2. The graph below plots the four day forecast change in humidity in NW Georgia starting early this morning. CO2 is plotted in pink across the bottom.

H2O concentrations can change by 15,000 ppm in a matter of minutes – but of course that isn’t important. What is important is 100ppm of CO2 changing over a century.

About Tony Heller

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33 Responses to The Boundary Line

  1. Tony Duncan says:

    Steve,

    Another brilliant exposé of the ignorance of Climate scientists. They have been trying for years to hide the fact that H20 has a much higher concentration in the atmosphere than CO2, and that it is a bigger factor in GHE. If they had been SMART they would have deviously suggested that CO2’s major effect is on the forcing of other GHG’s like H2O.

    How O how is Skeptical Science going to debunk THIS!

    • Tony,

      No matter how much evidence you are presented, you just can’t figure it out.

    • Dan says:

      You are using an existing model that includes water vapor to suggest that models don’t include water vapor?

    • suyts says:

      Yeh, but if they posited that CO2 was a forcing upon H2O, Steve would have just presented this graph to counter…….. which is sad, because that would detract from the humor opportunities presented.

      • Tony Duncan says:

        SUYTS

        Something is humorous because one could imagine the scenario by exaggerating something that really DOES exist.
        Whereas this invents a rarity that no one contends whatsoever. So it will only be humorous to those that are trying to make people believe reality is something else. Like making watermelon jokes about blacks. it is not really funny, because whites eat watermelons, and those that DO laugh at the jokes do so because they want to believe a reality that is actually a fantasy.
        it happens on both the left with the fantasy of evil cooperate executives slobbering after out money, and the right with the evil socialists wanting to enslave us.
        Some of Steve’s jokes are quite funny though, when they are actually exaggerating reality, and not reinventing it.

      • Dan says:

        First post was about an radiative transfer model, not apparently a coupled model that includes water vapor. Second on methane. Yes, it is important and this is no revelation either.
        3rd again looks at H2O vs CO2. Both are in the models so I don’t know what your point is. H2o is part of a cycle that is speeded up with more CO2.
        And your final point is again an independent radiative transfer conclusion of CO2 vs H2O.
        Current models include water vapor, cloud production, methane and much more. As time goes on they get more accurate. But comparing them to 1-dimensional radiative transfer code is of limited utility.

      • suyts says:

        Thanks Dan, that’s interesting……. they include cloud production……. yet they don’t know the forcing of clouds……… they can’t even legitimately state if they know if it is a negative or positive feedback. But they think their models can project reality. K.

      • Latitude says:

        “cloud production”

        I didn’t realize they had finally figured that out…
        ..so do clouds make it hotter or colder? and which clouds?

        “As time goes on they get more accurate”

        Thank you for admitting that the past doom and gloom predictions have been wrong…………..
        Got any idea when they might get it right?

      • suyts says:

        “Got any idea when they might get it right?”
        ==============================

        After we change the socio-economic-political environment of the entire globe.

  2. Tony Duncan says:

    Steve,

    No. I LOVE it when you present evidence. But it is most entertaining when you post things as being revelations, when it is such basic knowledge that everyone knows.
    But go ahead, find me any link to a climate scientist who says CO2 is innately a more potent GHG than H20.

    • suyts says:

      Tony, have you watched the video of the head of the EPA? Someone here has it. Its been posted several times. Listen to it and decide for yourself what she’s presenting……….. I’ll try to find it to expedite things……

      No, scientists aren’t stating CO2 has more GH effect than H2O, but it certainly is the message their presenting.

      Steve, do most of the models have CO2 as a prime variable or no?

      • Radiative transfer models normally consider at least six greenhouse gases – H2O, CO2, O3, N2O, CO and CH4

      • suyts says:

        Right, but my question would be, what weight do they allot each? I know that typically methane is considered a more potent GHG than CO2 for instance, so a reasonable increase in ppm or percentage would necessarily have to be weighted and the variability accurately accounted.

        Of course, then there’s the Tony posit of one GHG being a forcing of another…….

    • suyts says:

      Ahh, AAM posted this on WUWT….

      [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1TjRxudBgg&w=640&h=390]

      • Tony Duncan says:

        SUYTS

        If the world was producing levels of H2O that was adding significantly to the percentage of the atmosphere, that would be an issue. What we ARE doing is producing levels of CO2 that are significantly increasing it’s percentage in the atmosphere. I don’t see anything that she says in the video that is wrong, or implies that she does not know H2O has an intrinsically larger GHE than CO2.

      • suyts says:

        “Greenhouse gases are pollutants.” ….. “We know about air pollution.” ….. “We have a clean air act that deals with pollution…”
        ======================================
        If you didn’t know better, wouldn’t you take from that statement that greenhouse gases = pollution? That greenhouse gases = dirty air? Dirty being the antithesis of clean……..

      • suyts says:

        I should add…… wouldn’t the perspective be different if she would mention H2O is a GHG? Wouldn’t the message be different?

      • Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

        That’s right, Lisa Jackson is saying H2O is pollution.

        Now if we can just get rid of all that H2O from the earth. It might be a pretty expensive undertaking. Maybe they can come up with a filter that makes H2O into something safer for the environment than its current state. That might be cheaper than having to eject all H2O from the gravitational pull of the earth to keep it from coming back.

  3. gofer says:

    Isn’t she the one who didn’t know what the ppm of CO2 was?? Where is the evidence that humidity is increasing?

    • suyts says:

      lol, yes, and …… indeed, where is it? The absolutely funny part about this is that most of us can agree that humidity should rise with an increase in temps…… but, you’d have to see an increase in temps to prove the posit…….
      Well, we can’t in the last 10 years…..

      http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001.25/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001..25/trend

      CO2 is a proxy for energy spent, not energy produced.

      • Latitude says:

        Temperatures have gone down, severe weather events have gone down, sea levels have gone down, hurricanes have gone down, …and on and on

        All predicted by the computer games……………………

        Exactly how much hind-casting do they have to do to finally get it right? it’s been over 50 years now……….

        50 more years?
        100 more years?

        All based on weather, and everyone knows, you can’t predict the weather………….

      • Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

        They don’t care. They’ll just change their predictions. It should be called Prediction Change instead of Climate Change.

  4. Andy Weiss says:

    The whole arguement is whether a slightly higher amount of a trace gas in the atmosphere can cause runaway, catastrophic warming that requires drastic, extremely costly action. The evidence in the real world is that it ain’t happening.

  5. Edward says:

    “What we ARE doing is producing levels of CO2 that are significantly increasing it’s percentage in the atmosphere.”

    Oh we are are we?

    Who’s ‘we’? Mother Gaia?

    It’s all about H2O and in it’s gaseous state in the atmosphere, CO2 is a minor GHG, what don’t you understand about that?

    Let me put it another way, in a desert [dry] after sun-down, the air cools rapidly see: radiation heat loss and the lapse rate.
    In a sub tropical area on a similar latitude, post sun-down the surrounding sea level atmosphere retains it’s heat [radiative heat loss is greatly stemmed, so that night time T is nearly = to daytime levels], with – both areas of equal CO2 ppm………………………why do you think this is?

    I’ll tell yer for nothing, it’s all about humidity, humidity and humidity.

    CO2 – your aving a larf, atmospheric CO2 levels rise after temperature rise -not before, therefore CO2 cannot be causal.
    The world has been gradually naturally warming cyclically [warm and cool periods [see MWP/LIA] – since the recent ice retreat +/- 12,000 years ago.

  6. gofer says:

    On average, stratospheric water vapor increased by about 1 part per million by volume (27 percent) over the past 30 years, though there were many shorter-term variations in the record. Water vapor levels increased during 1980 to 1989 and 1990 to 2000, decreased from 2001 to 2005, and then increased again after 2005. The authors find that, at most, 30 percent of the observed water vapor increases can be attributed to greater amounts of methane oxidation in the stratosphere. The 2001 to 2005 decrease in midlatitude water vapor has been linked to observations of anomalously low tropopause temperatures in the tropics, but, to date, no connection between the observed water vapor increases and tropical tropopause temperatures has been found despite ongoing efforts.

    Source:
    Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, doi:10.1029/2010JD015065, 2011
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010JD015065

    Water vapor levels seesaw while CO2 increases. Papers have also been written that looks at water vapor as a negative feedback. They need to go back and show evidence for the basic hypothesis, instead of spending all their time trying to panic people with their doomsday forecasts. While they preach, their musings are being torn asunder.

    The tropical “hot spot” didn’t appear and should have been the end of AGW because models “required” its appearance. If water vapor fails to materialize, then what will they do? I wonder if when they cooked up this “theory” they realized that CO2 wouldn’t be enough for catastrophe, so they needed some forcings, and presto…..water vapor.

    • Latitude says:

      excellent!

    • Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

      gofer says:
      April 26, 2011 at 11:57 pm

      The tropical “hot spot” didn’t appear and should have been the end of AGW because models “required” its appearance. If water vapor fails to materialize, then what will they do?

      No matter. They will say “Global warming is happening and man is certainly the cause”. Global warming has never had any proof from the beginning. Yet they manufactured it in the media anyway.

  7. Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

    Two part video series with Roy Spencer showing negative feedback from warming the surface:

    part 1

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos49g1sdzo

  8. Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

    It sure would help global warming science to see the earth warming. I think they are still searching for the missing heat.

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