Articles | Volume 16, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-4159-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-4159-2016
Research article
 | 
30 Mar 2016
Research article |  | 30 Mar 2016

Upper tropospheric humidity changes under constant relative humidity

Klaus Gierens and Kostas Eleftheratos

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Status: closed
Status: closed
AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment
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Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision
AR by Klaus Gierens on behalf of the Authors (10 Feb 2016)  Author's response 
ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 Feb 2016) by Rolf Müller
RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (25 Feb 2016)
RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (04 Mar 2016)
ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (13 Mar 2016) by Rolf Müller
AR by Klaus Gierens on behalf of the Authors (14 Mar 2016)  Author's response 
ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (16 Mar 2016) by Rolf Müller
AR by Klaus Gierens on behalf of the Authors (17 Mar 2016)  Author's response   Manuscript 
ED: Publish as is (17 Mar 2016) by Rolf Müller
AR by Klaus Gierens on behalf of the Authors (17 Mar 2016)
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Short summary
Upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) is a weighted mean of the relative humidity (RH) in the upper troposphere. It can change due to climate change even when the relative humidity would stay unchanged because the weighting functions will alter. We show that changes of UTH expected during 30 years of tropospheric warming are typically less than 1 % in magnitude and mostly negative. Larger positive changes of UTH (as found in an analysis of 30 years of satellite data) point thus to an increase of RH.
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