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Vertical structure of stratospheric water vapour trends derived from merged satellite data

Nature Geoscience volume 7, pages 768–776 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Stratospheric water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas. The longest available record from balloon observations over Boulder, Colorado, USA shows increases in stratospheric water vapour concentrations that cannot be fully explained by observed changes in the main drivers, tropical tropopause temperatures and methane. Satellite observations could help resolve the issue, but constructing a reliable long-term data record from individual short satellite records is challenging. Here we present an approach to merge satellite data sets with the help of a chemistry–climate model nudged to observed meteorology. We use the models’ water vapour as a transfer function between data sets that overcomes issues arising from instrument drift and short overlap periods. In the lower stratosphere, our water vapour record extends back to 1988 and water vapour concentrations largely follow tropical tropopause temperatures. Lower and mid-stratospheric long-term trends are negative, and the trends from Boulder are shown not to be globally representative. In the upper stratosphere, our record extends back to 1986 and shows positive long-term trends. The altitudinal differences in the trends are explained by methane oxidation together with a strengthened lower-stratospheric and a weakened upper-stratospheric circulation inferred by this analysis. Our results call into question previous estimates of surface radiative forcing based on presumed global long-term increases in water vapour concentrations in the lower stratosphere.

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Figure 1: Approach to merging satellite data sets.
Figure 2: Consistency between tropical tropopause temperature and lower-stratospheric water vapour.
Figure 3: Comparison of stratospheric water vapour from Boulder balloon, model, and merged satellite records.
Figure 4: Extension of the water vapour time series back to the mid 1980s.
Figure 5: Long-term changes in stratospheric water vapour and its drivers.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Canadian Space Agency for funding the CMAM30 project, with additional institutional support from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, who provided the model code and supercomputing time. We thank all national and international space agencies for making available their limb satellite observations for use in the SPARC Data Initiative.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6BB, UK

    M. I. Hegglin & T. G. Shepherd

  2. Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3V6, Canada

    D. A. Plummer & J. F. Scinocca

  3. Hampton University, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, Hampton, Virginia 23668, USA

    J. Anderson

  4. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91020, USA

    L. Froidevaux

  5. Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Granada 18008, Spain

    B. Funke

  6. NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Global Monitoring Divison, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA

    D. Hurst

  7. University of Bremen, Institute of Environmental Physics, Bremen 28334, Germany

    A. Rozanov & K. Weigel

  8. Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, 412 96, Sweden

    J. Urban

  9. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe 76021, Germany

    T. von Clarmann

  10. University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 1A7, Canada

    K. A. Walker

  11. Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0340, USA

    H. J. Wang

  12. GEOMAR, Kiel 24105, Germany

    S. Tegtmeier

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  1. M. I. Hegglin
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Contributions

M.I.H. designed the methodology, performed the data analysis, and wrote the paper. D.A.P. helped with the statistical analysis, and together with J.F.S. devised and implemented the nudged model simulations. T.G.S. contributed to the interpretation and writing of the text. D.H. provided processed balloon observations. J.A., L.F., B.F., A.R., J.U., T.v.C., H.J.W., K.A.W., S.T. and K.W. processed and provided the satellite data sets.

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Correspondence to M. I. Hegglin.

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Hegglin, M., Plummer, D., Shepherd, T. et al. Vertical structure of stratospheric water vapour trends derived from merged satellite data. Nature Geosci 7, 768–776 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2236

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