Climate Letter #2016

There is a way to accurately measure the surface warming effect of the precipitable water (PW) in the atmosphere, relative to any given location. I described the method in yesterday’s letter, basically repeating descriptions given many times in previous letters. The way I have been doing it is crude, and most likely does not end up with reliable numbers, but that’s not the point. Does the method itself have utilitarian value, capable of producing results that are both trustworthy and useful, if practices of a less crude nature are put into action? I have already described many approaches to improving those practices, and to this day I keep finding more that that are needed and doable, but not without help. I can only urge a broader and more professional undertaking. But why? What is the value of knowing more about the role of PW in the climate system?

PW contains all of the water vapor that exists in the atmosphere and all of the matter formed into clouds.  The former is known to be the most powerful of all greenhouse gases and also the most difficult of all gases to evaluate because of its short life and highly irregular pattern of distribution.  The other, which is just as irregular or more so—often being completely absent—is known to have surface warming capabilities that are virtually impossible to evaluate with measurements of any kind, with respect to source or by tangible results.  We can sense its presence at night, when there is no albedo effect being generated on cloud tops, but the situation in daytime is much more complicated. Cloud albedo power has its own set of significant irregularities to deal with on the cool side.

To repeat, PW, in its entirety, contains all there is of both substances. The atmosphere over any given location on the surface will always contain some amount of water vapor. Most locations will also have some amount of cloud cover on a good majority of days, but not every day. The PW measurements that we receive each day, all mapped out, are particularly useful because they show results, in terms of total molecular weight, for the combined amount of these materials as contained in the air above each location. It cannot separate the results for each material, but having a total number is by itself of real interest for one good reason, because the total keeps changing every day—and, by implication, so should the combined impact of the two sources of warming be changing every day. So—for any given location, total PW weight changes every day; average surface temperature as we know it also changes every day; plus one more thing— now strike up the band—we also receive good numbers informing us of the exact difference between today’s temperature number and the average value of that same number spread out over all of the same days of year for each of the 20 years in a selected baseline period. This combination provides us with a view of global warming that we can analyze bit by bit, at the grass roots level, where a good part of the action is happening in real time.

With just this amount of information, we can immediately go ahead and compare what we see in PW numbers, all color coded and spread out on a map, with what we see in anomaly numbers, also color coded and spread out on another map. Do they ever seem to overlap, like high-to-high and low-to-low, in ways that go beyond coincidence? I see them do so every day, with nothing more than a quick glance. This has always been enough to call for further investigation, which in my case has led to a number of conclusions about PW that, if true, have meaningful implications that will improve our understanding of climate behavior. Since these implications, as previously spelled out in the structure of Carl’s theory, are not favorable, the next step in this investigation should be taken sooner rather than later.

Carl