Nowack, Peer and Ceppi, Paulo and Davis, Sean M. and Chiodo, Gabriel and Ball, William and Diallo, Mohamadou and Hassler, Birgit and Jia, Yue and Keeble, James and Joshi, Manoj (2023) Response of stratospheric water vapour to warming constrained by satellite observations. Nature Geoscience. Nature Publishing Group. doi: 10.1038/s41561-023-01183-6. ISSN 1752-0894.
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Official URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01183-6
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. Our constraint represents a 50% decrease in the 95th percentile of the climate model uncertainty distribution, which has implications for surface warming, ozone recovery and the tropospheric circulation response under climate change.
Item URL in elib: | https://elib.dlr.de/195800/ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Document Type: | Article | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Title: | Response of stratospheric water vapour to warming constrained by satellite observations | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Authors: |
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Date: | 26 June 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Nature Geoscience | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Refereed publication: | Yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Open Access: | Yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gold Open Access: | No | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In SCOPUS: | Yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In ISI Web of Science: | Yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1038/s41561-023-01183-6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ISSN: | 1752-0894 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Status: | Published | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Keywords: | stratosphere; water vapour; emergent constraint | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
HGF - Research field: | Aeronautics, Space and Transport | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
HGF - Program: | Space | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
HGF - Program Themes: | Earth Observation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DLR - Research area: | Raumfahrt | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DLR - Program: | R EO - Earth Observation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DLR - Research theme (Project): | R - Atmospheric and climate research | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Location: | Oberpfaffenhofen | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Institutes and Institutions: | Institute of Atmospheric Physics > Earth System Model Evaluation and Analysis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Deposited By: | Hassler, Dr. Birgit | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Deposited On: | 06 Jul 2023 09:45 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Last Modified: | 11 Jul 2023 08:59 |
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