The argument I have been making contends that surface air temperatures around the globe are highly dependent on the amount of precipitable water (PW) in the atmosphere directly above any particular location. It further contends that large changes in surface temperature on a short-term basis are much more dependent on PW volume than any other single factor. Examples of supporting evidence can be found every day in the Weather Maps, but there are still some relevant questions to be answered.
One question would be, what about water vapor? Is PW really anything more than a cover for water vapor? We know that the components of all PW measurements must contain considerable amounts of water vapor, perhaps close to 100% in some cases. Could the vapor component actually be doing all the warming while all others are just going along for the ride? If this were the case, we would need to understand that PW is being chosen over the gas as a measuring tool only as a practical convenience, because we happen to have much more accurate ways of measuring total PW volumes than water vapor alone. This would be due to instrument limitations, which are very real, and a realization that there is no reason to avoid the advantages offered.
It’s a good consideration, except that we know too much about the greenhouse warming power of one of the other leading components of PW, cloud bodies. We have no good way to measure their power separately, and estimates that have been attempted are assuredly shaky. What PW can accomplish is to combine the true warming power of water vapor and of cloud bodies into one package, providing an accurate result for the combination that can never be duplicated individually. In fact there could be other regular components of PW that have greenhouse warming power and these would also be picked up in the package. The total package, even if we can’t break down each element, still provides a great deal of useful information about the cause of temperature change. We only have to label it properly, with reference to H2O, and with all three states included. I believe that existing PW measurements actually include the complete atmospheric content of all three states of H2O, very accurately, and with an absolute minimum of contamination. What’s wrong with that?
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Carl