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Willett, Katharine M., Jones, Philip D. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5032-5493, Gillett, Nathan P. and Thorne, Peter W.
(2008)
Recent changes in surface humidity: Development of the HadCRUH dataset.
Journal of Climate, 21 (20).
pp. 5364-5383.
ISSN 1520-0442
Abstract
Water vapor constitutes the most significant greenhouse gas, is a key driver of many atmospheric processes, and hence, is fundamental to understanding the climate system. It is a major factor in human "heat stress," whereby increasing humidity reduces the ability to stay cool. Until now no truly global homogenized surface humidity dataset has existed with which to assess recent changes. The Met Office Hadley Centre and Climatic Research Unit Global Surface Humidity dataset (HadCRUH), described herein, provides a homogenized quality controlled near-global 5° by 5° gridded monthly mean anomaly dataset in surface specific and relative humidity from 1973 to 2003. It consists of land and marine data, and is geographically quasicomplete over the region 60°N-40°S. Between 1973 and 2003 surface specific humidity has increased significantly over the globe, tropics, and Northern Hemisphere. Global trends are 0.11 and 0.07 g kg 1(10 yr)-1 for land and marine components, respectively. Trends are consistently larger in the tropics and in the Northern Hemisphere during summer, as expected: warmer regions exhibit larger increases in specific humidity for a given temperature change under conditions of constant relative humidity, based on the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. Relative humidity trends are not significant when averaged over the landmass of the globe, tropics, and Northern Hemisphere, although some seasonal changes are significant. A strong positive bias is apparent in marine humidity data prior to 1982, likely owing to a known change in reporting practice for dewpoint temperature at this time. Consequently, trends in both specific and relative humidity are likely underestimated over the oceans.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | sdg 13 - climate action,sdg 14 - life below water ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Climatic Research Unit Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (former - to 2017) Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Climate, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (former - to 2017) |
| Depositing User: | Rosie Cullington |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Feb 2011 12:21 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Jun 2023 23:59 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/24719 |
| DOI: | 10.1175/2008JCLI2274.1 |
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