To the Rusty Chemist-I Stand Corrected

On March 23 I made a comment that the models predicting global warming didn't include water vapor. The Rusty Chemist called me to task, and I stand corrected. The General Circulation Models (GCM's) do include water vapor. However, when one reads how this is done, one can be (a) very confused and (b) be even more suspect about the models. Most scientists (even the global warming zealots) seem to agree that the models need more work.

Starting with the Third Assessment Report (TAR) here the GCM doesn't include clouds. All forcings in the model appear to be clear sky. Don't know about the UN, but I've lived in places that average 182 days of sunshine/year. That means over half the year is cloudy. (It's a major source of depression in Southwest Michigan). The author of this section seems to be satisfied with the fact that the IPCC assumes that all heating is not disturbed by clouds.

The climate models seem to include water vapor at constant relative humidity. My limited, almost 6 decades of experience, indicates that the relative humidity isn't constant. In addition, I believe that temperature has some effect on the amount of water vapor contained at a given RH. Seem to remember the 100% RH days at almost 0°F in Michigan making for very dry in-house humidity.

The best description in my readings (forced on me by Rusty Chemist) was from Mahlman here indicating that the CO2 increase is additive and enhances the change from water vapor.

Climate models have some
minor problems here Dr. Patrick Michaels, problems with climate models

This was a wildly unscientific response in the face of a clear, quantitative analysis. The real reason for the models’ failure can be found in the USNA itself (Figure 11 in Chapter 1 of the USNA Foundation document). It is reproduced here as our Figure 2. The discrepancies occur because:

1) U.S. temperatures rose rapidly, approximately 1.2°F, from about 1910 to 1930. The GCMs, which base their predictions largely on changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, miss this warming, as by far the largest amounts of emissions were after 1930.

2) U.S. temperatures fell, about 1.0°F, from 1930 to 1975. This is the period in which the GCMs begin to ramp up their U.S. warming, and

3) U.S. temperatures rose again about 1.0°F from 1975 to 2000, recovering their decline between 1930 and 1975.

It is eminently clear that much of the warming in the U.S. record took place before most of the greenhouse gas changes, and that nearly one-half of the “greenhouse era,” the 20th century, was accompanied by falling temperatures over the U.S. These models were simply too immature to reproduce this behavior because of their crude inputs.

I have no doubt that the climate is warming. I have some doubts about the anthropogenic part. I'll ask a simple question that you can test at home: is CO2 a leading or lagging indicator of warming? Gas solubility in water has an inverse relationship to temperature. That is, the warmer the water, the less soluble the gas. Test 1. If you have tropical fish, turn the heater up 10 degrees. The fish don't die from the warmer water, they begin to die because the warmer water decreases the oxygen content of the water. Test 2. Open a cold bottle of pop and observer the amount of fizz, then open a warm bottle and observe the fizz. The fizz is CO2.

I'm not denying the potential problem of anthropogenc global warming. I simply think the science and the proof is not yet there.