The Sun Controls Earths Climate not CO2

Ice ages occur over extremely long periods of time, like 10,000 years.

 

The first paper I find on water-vapor trends

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Staff/Fasullo/refs/Trenberth2005FasulloSmith.pdf

Unfortunately covers a relatively short time (1988-2003) but it does compare balloon soundings with satellites. In their Fig. 4, it is flat or slightly upward by my eye. By the authors' analysis, +0.4 mm per decade. It is nice to see that this tracks well with sea-surface temperatures, because that is what one would expect.

I would be very interested in publications on (longer) global radiosonde trends. Especially if there have been equipment changes over the record. Not all hygrometers give quite the same results, unfortunately.

 

OK, the middle graph is (air) water-content anomaly from about 1950 to about 2010, yes? Global or US only?
Anyway, yes, the red line is negative but wouldn't you say, rather strongly influenced by the two big bumps prior to 1960? If you started from 1960, the slope would be positive.

However there do appear to be several other studies about trends in global atmospheric humidity, one is cited in that 'Klimaat...' link in the other thread. I imagine that there must be a summary out there somewhere, ideally comparing 'sondes', AIRS infrared soundings, and GPS occultations. These seem to be the 'way it's done', aside from hygrometers at surfaces stations - which would be interesting in themselves.

If this is a topic of interest to Mojo, perhaps he'll find such a summary/review.

I tried to download the monthly relative humidity reanalysis product from here
PSD/Climate Diagnostics Branch, Data: NCEP Reanalysis Surface
but could not open it. Anyway it is 31 megabytes and I fear you have not raised my interest in the project to that level yet.

 

Ah the poor, old, unemployed as "stupid, lazy and ignorant" and an excuse why the rich do nothing. The poorer one is the less pollution one can afford to generate. The guy with three 10,000 square foot McMansion's with heated pools and garages full of Hummers, docks full of speed boats, flying first class generates waaay more green house gases than the 55 year old disabled and unemployed day laborer who can't pay his gas and electric bill if he even has a house or apartment to have gas and electric.

Rich person could afford to put the solar panels on, build the houses green, smaller and super energy efficient, drive higher cost EV's, pay extra for sustainable energy. The poor person has no such choices and pollutes way less to start.

Take it to the national level, the reason the US should do more than China is we generate 23.5 tons of green house gases per capita vs. 7.4 tons while we have $48000 vs $5416 per capita to make better choices.

 

^^ You are playing in stereotypes. The actual data show that people who request 'help' with their heating and electric bills consume more energy than average for their communitees. I suspect the underlying reasons are similar to why poor people are fatter, and eat less nutritious food than those with more means.

Keep in mind I am talking about American poor, not really poor.

 

How is per capita data on income and green house gas emissions "playing stereotypes". Poor people and poor nations cannot afford to pollute as much as rich as the data demonstrates. Same is true on a personal level. Rich can afford to pollute more and do. Rich can also afford to pollute much less. True of nations, true of people.

 

A reasonable reason that poor(er) Americans spend more on energy is that they live in poorer insulated houses, and drive older, less fuel efficient vehicles. Blaming the poor for societal problems misses the point.

Icarus

 

Poor don't spend more total dollars but they likely are forced to spend more of their income for energy on a percentage basis.

Always a puzzle why so many big expensive homes are not built as zero net energy. Clearly the owners have the money to do it. Many of the homes are second homes. That they use the excuse that old ladies on Social Security don't drive Tesla's or have solar panels is so lame.

 

Reasonable, and no doubt in part true. More to the point though, they waste when someone else is paying, and they waste out of ignorance, and they waste out of an odd POV of entitlement. Please note, I am not saying that these perversions are unique to poor people, only that poor people also embrace them.

 

Yes...the wealthy are a burden for us all with their ignorance and sense of entitlement and much greater carbon footprint.

 

The links I find in the "Examiner' media piece are to scribd and a wordpress site. Not able to open either of them, sorry.

I bet you do understand what I'm saying, just pretending not to. Lead us to a scientific journal publication that demonstrates the global trend of tropospheric water vapor. I have linked to several, but none of them really satisfies. Too, short, too local, not enough methods intercomparison.

The idea that the atmosphere is drying out is your contention here, right? So you want to hit the home run, right? Don't disappoint me again, as on the polar ice thing. I don't think I can bear it

Mojo says that the linked graph @24 represents 1761 stations. Knowing the Central-limit theorem (as we do), look at those wild swings 1948 to 1960. At least, they invite us to take a close look at the data. May we not do so, please?

As to Cherry picking I am exceedingly glad that he now would agree that 1998 is not an ideal starting point to consider air T increases more recently. Welcome aboard, Mojo.

 

Here are the 20 years of scientific data by world's leading climate scientists. IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

One would be foolish not to believe that much research by that many of the world's top climate scientists. I'm sure they would be as happy to report man made climate change was not a problem but they have to report what the many years of solid research tells them.

On the positive side, they have outlined a path to mitigate the damage. Cutting our CO2 output by 80% by 2050, an entirely achievable goal which driving a Prius is a big part.

 

I have no doubt that a careful examination of the humidity record from global radiosondes would be informative. There are now about 800 launch sites globally going twice per day. That is quite a lot of data!

As I said earlier, there are several humidity-measuring devices inexpensive enough for this application, and one would really want to know the history of their use. Were I presumptuous enough to declare any study a gold standard, it would include that. Important in science to make sure your tools are measuring the thing you want to know.

One of the studies I linked on Mojo's other humidity thread looks at a quarter of a billion data points (IIRC). That would be just about the entire sonde record. Perhaps we should take a closer look at that one.

 

Must apologize. The message in the sister thread where I provided links to humidity time series did not get in.

...

Having tried again, I guess that a list of links (that get parsed through some sort of viglink thing) are impeeding progress. So I'll try two-by-two


An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/340098/1/KentBerryPrytherchRoberts_IJoC.pdf

 

Well this is all beyond me. The one above listed as "an error ...cookie"

Should take you to here
" An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
Recent Climatology, Variability, and Trends in Global Surface Humidity

AiguoDai

(just in case it doesn't)

and here are the next two:

An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
A comparison of large scale changes in surface humidity over land in observations and CMIP3 general circulation models - Abstract - Environmental Research Letters - IOPscience