Global atmospheric mass, surface pressure, and water vapor variations

Abstract

Variations in the hydrological cycle and the water vapor content of the atmosphere form a vital part of the “greenhouse” feedback mechanism that can substantially enhance perturbations in the atmosphere arising from changes in forcing, such as those associated with increases in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. An analysis is therefore made of the mean annual cycle interannual variability and trends in global‐scale water vapor content of the atmosphere for December 1978 through December 1985, using global analyses from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts. Since the variations in total atmospheric mass are almost entirely due to water vapor, two entirely independent global measures of the water vapor content can be compared. These are the total surface pressure due to water vapor from humidity analyses and the total surface pressure itself. For the mean annual cycle these show excellent agreement, and the analyses are therefore compatible with the constraint that the total mass of dry air is conserved. However, it appears that both the interannual variability and trends in water vapor are sufficiently small that they are lost in the noise level of the data, A new estimate of the total mass of the atmosphere is 5.1361×1018 kg for the annual mean, corresponding to a mean surface pressure of 984.43 mbar. It ranges from 5.1352×1018 kg in January to 5.1371×1018 kg in July, owing to the annual cycle in global water vapor which has an amplitude of 1.0×1015 kg (0.2 mbar). The total mass of dry air is estimated to be 5.123×1018 kg (or 981.9 mbar). Also presented is the partitioning of the mass for both the total and the water vapor into the contributions from each hemisphere and as a function of latitude. Mean annual surface pressures in the northern and southern hemispheres are found to be 981.92 and 986.93 mbar, respectively. Monthly mean hemispheric fluctuations in surface pressures of ±1 mbar are not uncommon and tend to be reflected by opposite anomalies in the other hemisphere (consistent with conservation of mass), but the residual in the global monthly mean is of the order of 0.1 mbar. Since this is greater than the magnitude of the possible signal in water vapor surface pressure, the available evidence indicates that the analyzed global monthly anomalies are mostly noise.