Climate Letter #2091

Scientific studies of atmospheric rivers (ARs) have grown considerably in the past decade, mostly under the radar. We seldom see any kind of news release about a new study. The authors generally do not include any of the bigger names and the same goes for most of their journals of publication. The only time that ARs are able to make the news is when one of them produces an extraordinary amount of rainfall. Otherwise there is never anything said about how, or even whether, they should be factored into climate models or contribute to climate change in some significant way. I have lately become interested for two main reasons. One is an awareness that many scientists are now defining AR phenomena more broadly than before, with results coming close to matching my previous descriptions of them in terms such as: “concentrated streams of precipitable water (PW) that originate near the borders of the tropical belt, are uplifted to higher altitudes and move erratically across the mid to upper latitudes with a directional bias from east to west and poleward.” Scientists are not setting limitations on the altitudes of ARs as long as they are generally up high, but not necessarily at the level of jetstream winds, which I now fully agree with.

The other reason I’ve become interested is because many of the scientific studies include observations of rapid intensification in the overall amount of rainfall ARs are producing, at least in certain specific regions. It seems unlikely that this could occur without a corresponding increase in the volume of PW being carried by the overhead rivers that approach these regions. Moreover, the rates of intensification of rainfall is often portrayed at a pace that can be interpreted as greater than the overall rate of global warming. This could easily be true for one region without setting off any alarm bells, but should not occur on a global scale without implying a breakdown in the assumed relationship between global temperatures and the total amount of water vapor that could be held by the atmosphere under the Clausius-Clapeyron equation principle. It’s considered a possibility, and is being investigated by some individuals.

My personal interest, as you know, is not about rainfall, but relates to the effects of PW on surface temperatures. That especially includes the effects of PW concentrations that exist in the upper levels of the atmosphere, all because of the fact that PW is what ARs are made of. If ARs are intensifying in volume so is the amount of upper level PW, and therefore so must the total greenhouse energy effect it generates be increasing. I have no personal way of describing things like the total amount of PW that is elevated at any one time, or whether or not it is increasing, or whether or not the amount is in fact limited by the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. Scientific studies performed by independent researchers can be very helpful in that regard, even if precipitation is their only subject of interest. They could even add to my understanding of the average lifetime of the contents of an AR, what determines the timing of AR reduction because of precipitation, how far an average AR travels in a poleward direction before its contents have fully dissipated, or whether we can measure how much of an AR is composed of water vapor and how much of particulate aerosols.

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The weather maps keep telling me that, weight for weight, total PW has a fairly uniform greenhouse effect regardless of the proportionality of its components. What this means, again weight for weight, is that the aerosol components, including fine cloud droplets, have effects roughly equivalent to those or pure water vapor. They need not be identical. Lately I have begun to suspect that the aerosols—again weight for weight—have a greenhouse effect that is a little more powerful than that of water vapor alone, which would mean a bit greater than 10C per double on a logarithmic scale. The data I use is suggestive, but not accurate enough to prove anything. I do know that something is producing amplified temperatures right now on the surface of continental Antarctica. Go back and read Friday’s letter again and tell me what may be causing the increased other than the greenhouse effect of PW, which is now being delivered into the heart of the continent by a bevy of ARs that picked up their molecular H2O contents in the warm waters of far-off places.

Carl

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