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Explaining how the water vapor greenhouse effect works

The skeptic argument...
Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
"Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas. If you get a fall evening and the sky is clear, heat will escape, the temperature will drop. If there's cloud cover, the heat is trapped by water vapour and the temperature stays warm. If you go to In Salah in southern Algeria, they recorded at noon 52°C. By midnight, it's -3.6°C. It's caused because there is very little water vapour in the atmosphere and is a demonstration of water vapour as the most important greenhouse gas." (Tim Ball)


What the science says...
Select a level... Basic

Increased CO2 makes more water vapor, a greenhouse gas which amplifies warming


When skeptics use this argument, they are trying to imply that an increase in CO2 isn't a major problem. If CO2 isn't as powerful as water vapor, which there's already a lot of, adding a little more CO2 couldn't be that bad, right? What this argument misses is the fact that water vapor creates what scientists call a 'positive feedback loop' in the atmosphere — making any temperature changes larger than they would be otherwise.

How does this work? The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere exists in direct relation to the temperature. If you increase the temperature, more water evaporates and becomes vapor, and vice versa. So when something else causes a temperature increase (such as extra CO2 from fossil fuels), more water evaporates. Then, since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this additional water vapor causes the temperature to go up even further—a positive feedback.

How much does water vapor amplify CO2 warming? Studies show that water vapor feedback roughly doubles the amount of warming caused by CO2. So if there is a 1°C change caused by CO2, the water vapor will cause the temperature to go up another 1°C. When other feedback loops are included, the total warming from a potential 1°C change caused by CO2 is, in reality, as much as 3°C.

The other factor to consider is that water is evaporated from the land and sea and falls as rain or snow all the time. Thus the amount held in the atmosphere as water vapour varies greatly in just hours and days as result of the prevailing weather in any location. So even though water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas, it is relatively short-lived. On the other hand, CO2 is removed from the air by natural geological-scale processes and these take a long time to work. Consequently CO2 stays in our atmosphere for years and even centuries. A small additional amount has a much more long-term effect.


So skeptics are right in saying that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas. What they don't mention is that the water vapor feedback loop actually makes temperature changes caused by CO2 even bigger.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm