Long-term changes of water vapour in the lower stratosphere inevitably affect the surface climate. Thus understanding such changes is of primary importance. The longest continuous data set is based on balloon-borne frost point hygrometer observations at Boulder. Overall this data set shows an increase in water vapour since the 1980s accompanied by large variability on short time scales (Hurst et al., 2011). Recently a merged satellite data set, covering the time period between 1988 and 2010, has been analysed showing a decrease of water vapour in the lower stratosphere (Hegglin et al., 2014). This discrepancy is difficult to reconcile. There might be problems with one data set or even with both. Also the local behaviour at Boulder might not be representative for the zonal mean behaviour, which is represented by the satellite observations. So far this has been assumed and the Boulder changes have even been considered to be globally representative. Here I present investigations of this aspect using both model simulations and observations.

References:

Hegglin et al. (2014), “Vertical structure of stratospheric water vapour trends derived from merged satellite data”, Nature Geoscience, 7, 768 – 776, doi:10.1038/ngeo2236.

Hurst et al. (2011), “Stratospheric water vapor trends over Boulder, Colorado: Analysis of the 30 year Boulder record”, Journal of Geophysical Research, 116, D02,306, doi:10.1029/2010JD015065.