Climate Letter #1954

Carl’s theory, part 1, as it stands, seeks to inform us that the condensation of water vapor into clouds, an action that gives rise to the concept of precipitable water (PW), has no significant effect on the strength of the greenhouse energy output produced by the H2O molecules that are involved.  This claim is based on observations made by only one person, your author, with the help of nothing more than imagery provided by the daily set of maps issued by the U of Maine (https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom). I am not aware of any scientific literature that even addresses this question, or for that matter anything else related to PW’s greenhouse effect, which is presumably dismissed as irrelevant.

Separately, science does have things to say about the greenhouse effect of water vapor, which it believes to have been fully resolved and is thus not a live issue.  Science has also given some thought toward questioning the greenhouse effect of various kinds of cloud formations, resulting only in the roughest of estimates.  Cloud formation also produces albedo effects, which are a major source of global cooling, and this is where everything changes.  Cloud albedo can be conveniently approached in a number of ways for purposes of scientific study, and results keep pouring in.  Just a few days ago a new study was published which has some heartening news about how the cooling effect of warmer clouds is being underestimated by climate models.  The study itself has no open access, but a fine review with extra commentary has been put together by Carbon Brief, available at this link: https://www.carbonbrief.org/cooling-effect-of-clouds-underestimated-by-climate-models-says-new-study.

This review is well worth spending some time on.  It opens a wide door to a field of research that has a number of unresolved questions which have a reasonably good chance of soon being answered. These are questions that have a bearing on the future outlook for climate conditions, giving them a high degree of social importance, which means climate scientists have every reason to devote so much attention to the subject.  What I can’t see is why the “other side” of open questions about the impact of clouds on climate, this time from a warming standpoint, is not equally important, and thus worthy of equally intense study.  It’s possible that scientists are simply frustrated because of poor data to work with and not even a good idea about where to start investigating.  Here are some thoughts about a good starting point:

Everyone should recognize that exact measurements of specific total PW content over every corner of the globe are available right now, every single day, and nicely mapped out. So are daily temperatures and their departure from historical averages for every corner of the same globe, again nicely mapped out. A scientist who spends a little time looking at these maps should quickly spot some interesting relationships, possibly enough of them to spark some real curiosity. Every scientist knows that the two principal components of PW are water vapor and cloud formations, that both of these are leading producers of greenhouse energy effects, and that even if their relative effects cannot be separately measured they are almost certain to be imposed in combination. In that case perhaps a way could be found to evaluate the combined effect (the possibility of which I have already demonstrated), and perhaps the result might be suggestive of something meaningful, with indications of how to go on from there with or without a full separation of the greenhouse effects.

Carl