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Response of stratospheric water vapour to warming constrained by satellite observations

Nowack, Peer ORCID iD icon 1; Ceppi, Paulo; Davis, Sean M.; Chiodo, Gabriel; Ball, Will; Diallo, Mohamadou A.; Hassler, Birgit; Jia, Yue; Keeble, James; Joshi, Manoj
1 Institut für Theoretische Informatik (ITI), Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)

Abstract:

Future increases in stratospheric water vapour risk amplifying climate change and slowing down the recovery of the ozone layer. However, state-of-the-art climate models strongly disagree on the magnitude of these increases under global warming. Uncertainty primarily arises from the complex processes leading to dehydration of air during its tropical ascent into the stratosphere. Here we derive an observational constraint on this longstanding uncertainty. We use a statistical-learning approach to infer historical co-variations between the atmospheric temperature structure and tropical lower stratospheric water vapour concentrations. For climate models, we demonstrate that these historically constrained relationships are highly predictive of the water vapour response to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. We obtain an observationally constrained range for stratospheric water vapour changes per degree of global warming of 0.31 ± 0.39 ppmv K−1. Across 61 climate models, we find that a large fraction of future model projections are inconsistent with observational evidence. In particular, frequently projected strong increases (>1 ppmv K−1) are highly unlikely. ... mehr


Verlagsausgabe §
DOI: 10.5445/IR/1000160562
Veröffentlicht am 19.01.2024
Originalveröffentlichung
DOI: 10.1038/s41561-023-01183-6
Scopus
Zitationen: 8
Web of Science
Zitationen: 7
Dimensions
Zitationen: 13
Cover der Publikation
Zugehörige Institution(en) am KIT Institut für Theoretische Informatik (ITI)
Publikationstyp Zeitschriftenaufsatz
Publikationsmonat/-jahr 07.2023
Sprache Englisch
Identifikator ISSN: 1752-0894, 1752-0908
KITopen-ID: 1000160562
Erschienen in Nature Geoscience
Verlag Nature Research
Band 16
Heft 7
Seiten 577–583
Vorab online veröffentlicht am 26.06.2023
Nachgewiesen in Scopus
Dimensions
Web of Science
Globale Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung Ziel 13 – Maßnahmen zum Klimaschutz
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