Soden Brian J, Wetherald Richard T, Stenchikov Georgiy L, Robock Alan
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA.
Science. 2002 Apr 26;296(5568):727-30. doi: 10.1126/science.296.5568.727.
The sensitivity of Earth's climate to an external radiative forcing depends critically on the response of water vapor. We use the global cooling and drying of the atmosphere that was observed after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo to test model predictions of the climate feedback from water vapor. Here, we first highlight the success of the model in reproducing the observed drying after the volcanic eruption. Then, by comparing model simulations with and without water vapor feedback, we demonstrate the importance of the atmospheric drying in amplifying the temperature change and show that, without the strong positive feedback from water vapor, the model is unable to reproduce the observed cooling. These results provide quantitative evidence of the reliability of water vapor feedback in current climate models, which is crucial to their use for global warming projections.
地球气候对外部辐射强迫的敏感性主要取决于水汽的响应。我们利用皮纳图博火山喷发后观测到的全球大气冷却和干燥情况，来检验水汽气候反馈的模型预测。在此，我们首先强调模型在再现火山喷发后观测到的干燥情况方面的成功。然后，通过比较有水汽反馈和无水汽反馈的模型模拟，我们证明了大气干燥在放大温度变化方面的重要性，并表明，如果没有水汽的强正反馈，模型就无法再现观测到的冷却情况。这些结果为当前气候模型中水汽反馈的可靠性提供了定量证据，这对其用于全球变暖预测至关重要。
