An Explanation for the Decade-Long "Pause" in Global Warming?
Science published a study today which finds that shifts in the amount of water vapor in the lower stratosphere may explain why global average temperatures have basically stopped increasing for the past ten years. As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains:
Observations from satellites and balloons show that stratospheric water vapor has had its ups and downs lately, increasing in the 1980s and 1990s, and then dropping after 2000. The authors show that these changes occurred precisely in a narrow altitude region of the stratosphere where they would have the biggest effects on climate.
Water vapor is a highly variable gas and has long been recognized as an important player in the cocktail of greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, halocarbons, nitrous oxide, and others—that affect climate.
"Current climate models do a remarkable job on water vapor near the surface. But this is different — it's a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere that packs a wallop from one decade to the next in a way we didn't expect," says Susan Solomon, NOAA senior scientist and first author of the study.
Since 2000, water vapor in the stratosphere decreased by about 10 percent. The reason for the recent decline in water vapor is unknown. The new study used calculations and models to show that the cooling from this change caused surface temperatures to increase about 25 percent more slowly than they would have otherwise, due only to the increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
An increase in stratospheric water vapor in the 1990s likely had the opposite effect of increasing the rate of warming observed during that time by about 30 percent, the authors found.
The reason for the recent decline in water vapor is unknown? Hmmm. I wonder if there is anything else that the climate computer models on which we are relying to predict future climate change may have missed?
