Water vapour adjustments and responses differ between climate drivers

Hodnebrog, Øivind; Myhre, Gunnar; Samset, Bjørn H.; Alterskjær, Kari; Andrews, Timothy; Boucher, Olivier; Faluvegi, Gregory; Fläschner, Dagmar; Forster, Piers M.; Kasoar, Matthew; Kirkevåg, Alf; Lamarque, Jean-Francois; Olivié, Dirk; Richardson, Thomas B.; Shawki, Dilshad; Shindell, Drew; Shine, Keith P.; Stier, Philip; Takemura, Toshihiko; Voulgarakis, Apostolos; Watson-Parris, Duncan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-12887-2019

Articles | Volume 19, issue 20

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 12887–12899, 2019

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-12887-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 12887–12899, 2019

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-12887-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 20

Research article 17 Oct 2019

Research article | 17 Oct 2019

Water vapour adjustments and responses differ between climate drivers

Øivind Hodnebrog et al.

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-12887-2019-supplement

Data sets

PDRMIP A Precipitation Driver and Response Model Intercomparison Project-Protocol and Preliminary Results G.Myhre, P. M. Forster, B. H. Samset, O. Hodnebrog, J. Sillmann, S. G. Aalbergsjo, T. Andrews, O. Boucher, G. Faluvegi, D. Fläschner, T. Iversen, M. Kasoar, V. Kharin, A. Kirkevag, J. F. Lamarque, D. Olivie, T. B. Richardson, D. Shindell, K. P. Shine, C. W. Stjern, T. Takemura, A. Voulgarakis, and F. Zwiers https://doi.org/10.1175/bams-d-16-0019.1

An Overview of CMIP5 and the Experiment Design K. E. Taylor, R. J. Stouffer, and G. A. Meehl https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00094.1

Short summary

Different greenhouse gases (e.g. CO₂) and aerosols (e.g. black carbon) impact the Earth’s water cycle differently. Here we investigate how various gases and particles impact atmospheric water vapour and its lifetime, i.e., the average number of days that water vapour stays in the atmosphere after evaporation and before precipitation. We find that this lifetime could increase substantially by the end of this century, indicating that important changes in precipitation patterns are excepted.