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Warmer world gets wetter

Satellite observations suggest climate models are wrong on rainfall.

Global warming will increase worldwide precipitation by three times the amount predicted by current climate models, according to a study based on two decades' worth of satellite observations.

Read more here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on May 31, 2007 07:01 PM |

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So how much does an extra 6.5% water vapour in the atmosphere weigh? Wikipedia says 'mean mass of water vapor is estimated as 1.27×10^16 kg'. Is 6.5% of that enough to significantly offset any sea level rise?

And hey, won't all those clouds stop light and heat hitting the earth and so offset the warming effect?

Posted by: Norman Winn | June 1, 2007 01:45 PM

Extra clouds will reflect incoming sunlight, but extra water vapor will act as an extremely effective greenhouse gas. Until a much more thorough modeling effort determines which effect dominates I think we have to assume the effect will be six of one, half dozen of the other.

Unless, of course, you don't like rain.

Posted by: Tim Feinstein | June 1, 2007 03:43 PM

An interesting result indeed. As far as I know CO_2 is soluble in water, if the wetter climate will
not bring down the CO2 content of the atmosphere by washing it to the ocean. A study of CO2 content in the atmosphere during rains would be very much relevant to assess the effect of wetter climate on one of the most important global warming gas. In such a case, a negative feedback model has to be evolved to estimate the global warming on a long time scale.

Posted by: Ravindra Pratap Singh | June 5, 2007 05:34 AM

Additionally there's the long-term effect of the transfer to the hydrogen economy. The thought of x-ty million cars in the LA Basin all giving off water vapor as exhaust makes me want to say "Welcome to Southern Cali-bama!"

Posted by: Walter W. Matera | June 11, 2007 12:16 AM

Additional water vapour in a warmer atmosphere does not necessarily result in more cloud. with the additional temperature it is most likely to remain in the gaseous state, as vapour.

This means there is no negative feedback of reflecting more incoming light and heat, just the positive feedback of absorbing outgoing heat and re-emiting this back to earth again.

Posted by: Paul Carberry | July 3, 2007 12:40 AM

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