A very simple model for the water vapour feedback on climate change

2010 ◽  
Vol 136 (646) ◽  
pp. 30-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Simple Model ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Water Vapour Feedback

IAGOS Research Infrastructure for Global-Scale Atmosphere Monitoring by Instrumented Passenger Aircraft

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Petzold ◽  
Valerie Thouret ◽  
Christoph Gerbig ◽  
Andreas Zahn ◽  
Martin Gallagher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Relative Humidity ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Research Infrastructure ◽  
Good Resolution ◽  
European Research ◽  
Commercial Aircraft ◽  
High Quality

<p>IAGOS (www.iagos.org) is a European Research Infrastructure using commercial aircraft (Airbus A340, A330, and soon A350) for automatic and routine measurements of atmospheric composition including reactive gases (ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds), greenhouse gases (water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane), aerosols and cloud particles along with essential thermodynamic parameters. The main objective of IAGOS is to provide the most complete set of high-quality essential climate variables (ECV) covering several decades for the long-term monitoring of climate and air quality. The observations are stored in the IAGOS data centre along with added-value products to facilitate the scientific interpretation of the data. IAGOS began as two European projects, MOZAIC and CARIBIC, in the early 1990s. These projects demonstrated that commercial aircraft are ideal platforms for routine atmospheric measurements. IAGOS then evolved as a European Research Infrastructure offering a mature and sustainable organization for the benefits of the scientific community and for the operational services in charge of air quality and climate change issues such as the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Services (CAMS) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). IAGOS is also a contributing network of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).</p> <p>IAGOS provides measurements of numerous chemical compounds which are recorded simultaneously in the critical region of the upper troposphere – lower stratosphere (UTLS) and geographical regions such as Africa and the mid-Pacific which are poorly sampled by other means. The data are used by hundreds of groups worldwide performing data analysis for climatology and trend studies, model evaluation, satellite validation and the study of detailed chemical and physical processes around the tropopause. IAGOS data also play an important role in the re-assessment of the climate impact of aviation.</p> <p>Most important in the context of weather-related research, IAGOS and its predecessor programmes provide long-term observations of water vapour and relative humidity with respect to ice in the UTLS as well as throughout the tropospheric column during climb-out and descending phases around airports, now for more than 25 years. The high quality and very good resolution of IAGOS observations of relative humidity over ice are used to better understand the role of water vapour and of ice-supersaturated air masses in the tropopause region and to improve their representation in numerical weather and climate forecasting models. Furthermore, CAMS is using the water vapour vertical profiles in near real time for the continuous validation of the CAMS atmospheric models. </p>

scholarly journals Modelling a tropical-like cyclone in the Mediterranean Sea under present and warmer climate

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-71
Author(s):  
Shunya Koseki ◽  
Priscilla A. Mooney ◽  
William Cabos ◽  
Miguel Ángel Gaertner ◽  
Alba de la Vara ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Surface Wind ◽  
Sea Surface ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Cumulus Convection ◽  
Present Climate ◽  
Prognostic Variables ◽  
Warm Core

Abstract. This study focuses on a single Mediterranean hurricane (hereafter medicane), to investigate its response to global warming during the middle of the 21st century and assesses the effects of a warmer ocean and a warmer atmosphere on its development. Our investigation uses the state-of-the-art regional climate model WRF to produce the six-member, multi-physics ensembles. Results show that our model setup simulates a realistic cyclone track and the transition from an initial disturbance to a tropical-like cyclone with a deep warm core. However, the simulated transition occurs earlier than for the observed medicane. The response of the medicane to future climate change is investigated with a pseudo global warming (PGW) approach. This is the first application of the PGW framework to medicanes. The PGW approach adds a climate change delta (defined as difference between future and present climate) to WRF's boundary conditions which is obtained for all prognostic variables using the mean change in an ensemble of CMIP5 simulations. A PGW simulation where the climate change delta is added to all prognostic variables (PGWALL) shows that most of the medicane characteristics moderately intensify, e.g. surface wind speed, uptake of water vapour, and precipitation. However, the minimum sea level pressure (SLP) is almost identical to that under present climate conditions. Two additional PGW simulations were undertaken; One simulation adds the projected change in sea surface and skin temperature only (PGWSST) while the second simulation adds the PGW changes to only atmospheric variables (PGWATMS); i.e. we use present-day sea surface temperatures. These simulations show opposing responses of the medicane. In PGWSST, the medicane is more intense than PGWALL as indicated by lower SLP values, the stronger surface wind, and the more intense evaporation and precipitation. In contrast, the medicane in PGWATMS still transitions into a tropical-like cyclone with a deep warm core, but the PGWATMS medicane weakens considerably (SLP, surface wind, and rainfall decrease). This difference can be explained by an increase in water vapour driven by the warmer ocean surface (favourable for cumulus convection). The warmer and drier atmosphere in PGWATMS tends to inhibit condensation (unfavourable for cumulus convection). The warmer ocean and warmer atmosphere have counteracting effects which leads to only a modest enhancement of the medicane by global warming. The novel approach in this study provides new insights into the different roles of warming of the ocean and atmosphere in medicane development.

scholarly journals AirClim: an efficient tool for climate evaluation of aircraft technology

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (16) ◽  
pp. 4621-4639 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Grewe ◽  
A. Stenke
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Radiative Forcing ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Surface Temperature Change ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Temperature Changes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Concentration Changes

Abstract. Climate change is a challenge to society and to cope with requires assessment tools which are suitable to evaluate new technology options with respect to their impact on global climate. Here we present AirClim, a model which comprises a linearisation of atmospheric processes from the emission to radiative forcing, resulting in an estimate in near surface temperature change, which is presumed to be a reasonable indicator for climate change. The model is designed to be applicable to aircraft technology, i.e. the climate agents CO2, H2O, CH4 and O3 (latter two resulting from NOx-emissions) and contrails are taken into account. AirClim combines a number of precalculated atmospheric data with aircraft emission data to obtain the temporal evolution of atmospheric concentration changes, radiative forcing and temperature changes. These precalculated data are derived from 25 steady-state simulations for the year 2050 with the climate-chemistry model E39/C, prescribing normalised emissions of nitrogen oxides and water vapour at various atmospheric regions. The results show that strongest climate impacts (year 2100) from ozone changes occur for emissions in the tropical upper troposphere (60 mW/m2; 80 mK for 1 TgN/year emitted) and from methane changes from emissions in the middle tropical troposphere (−2.7% change in methane lifetime; –30 mK per TgN/year). For short-lived species (e.g. ozone, water vapour, methane) individual perturbation lifetimes are derived depending on the region of emission. A comparison of this linearisation approach with results from a comprehensive climate-chemistry model shows reasonable agreement with respect to concentration changes, radiative forcing, and temperature changes. For example, the total impact of a supersonic fleet on radiative forcing (mainly water vapour) is reproduced within 10%. A wide range of application is demonstrated.

Water vapour in the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere (UTLS): A new vertically resolved dataset from limb and nadir satellite observations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Ye ◽  
Michaela Hegglin ◽  
Martina Krämer ◽  
Christian Rolf ◽  
Alexandra Laeng ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Radiative Forcing ◽  
Lower Stratosphere ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Chemical Properties ◽  
Upper Troposphere ◽  
Data Record ◽  
Tropopause Region ◽  
Quality Water

<p>Water vapour in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) has a significant impact both on the radiative and chemical properties of the atmosphere. Reliable water vapour observations are essential for the evaluation of the accuracy of UTLS water vapour from model simulations, and thereafter of the contribution to the global radiative forcing and climate change. Limb-viewing and nadir satellites provide high quality water vapour observations above the lower stratosphere and below the upper troposphere, respectively, but show large uncertainties in the tropopause region.<span>  </span>Within the ESA Water Vapour Climate Change Initiative, we have developed a new scheme to optimally estimate water vapour profiles in the UTLS and in particular across the tropopause, by merging observations from a set of limb and nadir satellites from 2010 to 2014. The new data record of vertically resolved water vapour is validated against the aircraft in-situ water vapour observations from the JULIA database and frostpoint hydrometer records from WAVAS. Furthermore, the new data record is used to evaluate the UTLS water vapour distribution and interannual variations from chemistry-climate model (CCM) simulations and the ERA-5 reanalysis.</p>

scholarly journals A general model for effects of temperature on ectotherm ontogenetic growth and development

2011 ◽  
Vol 279 (1734) ◽  
pp. 1840-1846 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenyun Zuo ◽  
Melanie E. Moses ◽  
Geoffrey B. West ◽  
Chen Hou ◽  
James H. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Simple Model ◽  
Total Energy ◽  
Temperature Dependence ◽  
General Model ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
Biomass Accumulation ◽  
Rate Of Development ◽  
Body Sizes ◽  
Effects Of Temperature

The temperature size rule (TSR) is the tendency for ectotherms to develop faster but mature at smaller body sizes at higher temperatures. It can be explained by a simple model in which the rate of growth or biomass accumulation and the rate of development have different temperature dependence. The model accounts for both TSR and the less frequently observed reverse-TSR, predicts the fraction of energy allocated to maintenance and synthesis over the course of development, and also predicts that less total energy is expended when developing at warmer temperatures for TSR and vice versa for reverse-TSR. It has important implications for effects of climate change on ectothermic animals.

Gauging water-vapour feedback

Nature ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 342 (6251) ◽  
pp. 736-737 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D. Cess
Keyword(s):  
Water Vapour ◽  
Water Vapour Feedback

scholarly journals A multi-site techniques intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1075-1151 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Van Malderen ◽  
H. Brenot ◽  
E. Pottiaux ◽  
S. Beirle ◽  
C. Hermans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Satellite System ◽  
International Gnss Service ◽  
Change Analysis ◽  
Integrated Water Vapour ◽  
Sun Photometer ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Water vapour plays a dominant role in the climate change debate. However, observing water vapour over a climatological time period in a consistent and homogeneous manner is challenging. At one hand, networks of ground-based instruments allowing to retrieve homogeneous Integrated Water Vapour (IWV) datasets are being set up. Typical examples are Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observation networks such as the International GNSS Service (IGS), with continuous GPS (Global Positioning System) observations spanning over the last 15+ yr, and the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET), providing long-term observations performed with standardized and well-calibrated sun photometers. On the other hand, satellite-based measurements of IWV already have a time span of over 10 yr (e.g. AIRS) or are being merged in order to create long-term time series (e.g. GOME, SCIAMACHY, and GOME-2). The present study aims at setting up a techniques intercomparison of IWV measurements from satellite devices (in the visible, GOME/SCIAMACHY/GOME-2, and in the thermal infrared, AIRS), in-situ measurements (radiosondes) and ground-based instruments (GPS, sun photometer), to assess the applicability of either dataset for water vapour trends analysis. To this end, we selected 28 sites worldwide at which GPS observations can directly be compared with coincident satellite IWV observations, together with sun photometer and/or radiosonde measurements. We found that the mean biases of the different techniques w.r.t. the GPS estimates vary only between −0.3 to 0.5 mm of IWV, but the small bias is accompanied by large Root Mean Square (RMS) values, especially for the satellite instruments. In particular, we analysed the impact of the presence of clouds on the techniques IWV agreement. Also, the influence of specific issues for each instrument on the intercomparison is investigated, e.g. the distance between the satellite ground pixel centre and the co-located ground-based station, the satellite scan angle, daytime/nighttime differences, etc. Furthermore, we checked if the properties of the IWV scatter plots between these different instruments are dependent on the geography and/or altitude of the station. We could only detect a clear dependency of the RMS, for all considered instruments, on latitude or mean IWV: the RMS of the IWV observations w.r.t. the GPS IWV retrievals decreases with increasing latitude and decreasing mean IWV.

scholarly journals The impact of orbital sampling, monthly averaging and vertical resolution on climate chemistry model evaluation with satellite observations

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 9705-9742
Author(s):  
A. M. Aghedo ◽  
K. W. Bowman ◽  
D. T. Shindell ◽  
G. Faluvegi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Boundary Layer ◽  
Carbon Monoxide ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Atmospheric Temperature ◽  
Satellite Observations ◽  
Vertical Resolution ◽  
Upper Troposphere ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Ensemble climate model simulations used for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments have become important tools for exploring the response of the Earth System to changes in anthropogenic and natural forcings. The systematic evaluation of these models through global satellite observations is a critical step in assessing the uncertainty of climate change projections. This paper presents the technical steps required for using nadir sun-synchronous infrared satellite observations for multi-model evaluation and the uncertainties associated with each step. This is motivated by need to use satellite observations to evaluate climate models. We quantified the implications of the effect of satellite orbit and spatial coverage, the effect of variations in vertical sensitivity as quantified by the observation operator and the impact of averaging the operators for use with monthly-mean model output. We calculated these biases in ozone, carbon monoxide, atmospheric temperature and water vapour by using the output from two global chemistry climate models (ECHAM5-MOZ and GISS-PUCCINI) and the observations from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) satellite from January 2005 to December 2008. The results show that sampling and monthly averaging of the observation operators produce biases of less than ±3% for ozone and carbon monoxide throughout the entire troposphere in both models. Water vapour sampling biases were also within the insignificant range of ±3% (that is ±0.14 g kg−1) in both models. Sampling led to a temperature bias of ±0.3 K over the tropical and mid-latitudes in both models, and up to −1.4 K over the boundary layer in the higher latitudes. Using the monthly average of temperature and water vapour operators lead to large biases over the boundary layer in the southern-hemispheric higher latitudes and in the upper troposphere, respectively. Up to 8% bias was calculated in the upper troposphere water vapour due to monthly-mean operators, which may impact the detection of water vapour feedback in response to global warming. Our results reveal the importance of using the averaging kernel and the a priori profiles to account for the limited vertical resolution of a nadir observation during model application. Neglecting the observation operators resulted in large biases, which are more than 60% for ozone, ±30% for carbon monoxide, and range between −1.5 K and 5 K for atmospheric temperature, and between −60% and 100% for water vapour.

scholarly journals A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 2487-2512 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Van Malderen ◽  
H. Brenot ◽  
E. Pottiaux ◽  
S. Beirle ◽  
C. Hermans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Vapour ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Satellite System ◽  
International Gnss Service ◽  
Change Analysis ◽  
Integrated Water Vapour ◽  
Sun Photometer ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Water vapour plays a dominant role in the climate change debate. However, observing water vapour over a climatological time period in a consistent and homogeneous manner is challenging. On one hand, networks of ground-based instruments able to retrieve homogeneous integrated water vapour (IWV) data sets are being set up. Typical examples are Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observation networks such as the International GNSS Service (IGS), with continuous GPS (Global Positioning System) observations spanning over the last 15+ years, and the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET), providing long-term observations performed with standardized and well-calibrated sun photometers. On the other hand, satellite-based measurements of IWV already have a time span of over 10 years (e.g. AIRS) or are being merged to create long-term time series (e.g. GOME, SCIAMACHY, and GOME-2). This study performs an intercomparison of IWV measurements from satellite devices (in the visible, GOME/SCIAMACHY/GOME-2, and in the thermal infrared, AIRS), in situ measurements (radiosondes) and ground-based instruments (GPS, sun photometer), to assess their use in water vapour trends analysis. To this end, we selected 28 sites world-wide for which GPS observations can directly be compared with coincident satellite IWV observations, together with sun photometer and/or radiosonde measurements. The mean biases of the different techniques compared to the GPS estimates vary only between −0.3 to 0.5 mm of IWV. Nevertheless these small biases are accompanied by large standard deviations (SD), especially for the satellite instruments. In particular, we analysed the impact of clouds on the IWV agreement. The influence of specific issues for each instrument on the intercomparison is also investigated (e.g. the distance between the satellite ground pixel centre and the co-located ground-based station, the satellite scan angle, daytime/nighttime differences). Furthermore, we checked if the properties of the IWV scatter plots between these different instruments are dependent on the geography and/or altitude of the station. For all considered instruments, the only dependency clearly detected is with latitude: the SD of the IWV observations with respect to the GPS IWV retrievals decreases with increasing latitude and decreasing mean IWV.

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