Nicholas Frey
With the importance of the well being of Earth and keeping the Earth habitable to humans, scientists and researchers have noticed recently that the atmosphere’s water vapor amount has a direct effect on the global temperature. The article, Climate Change Gets Wet by Laurie Rich, from Discover Magazine, pulls two sources together to address the noticeable problem with water vapor and its effect on surface temperature. Andrew Dessler, from Texas A&M University, has noticed the initial relation between carbon dioxide and moisture in the lower atmosphere; while Susan Solomon, an atmospheric scientist, has noticed that the water vapor in the Stratosphere has declined. With both of these scientists the data that Dessler and Solomon have provided refers to global climate change and its possible causes.
The information that Rich provides in the article is minimal yet is enough to spark the interest of the reader and in turn causes people to do research of their own. Even though this article doesn't go in depth on Dessler’s or Solomon’ research, it does provide the reader with information that is useful to understand the main points that Rich is trying to get across in the article. Both Dessler and Solomon have plenty of research and data to prove their finding but in the article both of the sources have only a small paragraph explaining what their findings are. Rich most likely provided the short descriptions of Dessler’s and Solomon’s research to prove that both scientists are in agreement that the water vapor in the lower atmosphere has an impact on the carbon dioxide level.
Without going into much depth on the research that Dessler and Solomon provided, Rich has gone through to attain their information and to put it into context that can be easily understood. Since the article only summarized Dessler and Solomons data the reader doesn’t get the full magnitude of ether points. Thus the article would not provide the full impact that Rich is trying to get across.
In reference to Andrew Dessler’s work, the article states that as the greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere, the more water vapour it holds, thus the increase of water vapour causes an increase of surface temperature. Dessler’s research still provides ample information and data that proves the point of his findings. Even with all of this Dessler still states that the data collected is too new to really tell the exact extent of this research and the overall outcome. While the article gives more information from the second source, Susan Solomon, about the decline in the higher atmosphere it still does not give the full information that she has collected. Solomon’s work has provided her with a large amount of data that she uses to prove but also disprove her thought of water vapor and its effect on global temperature. So Solomon ends by explaining that to fully understand if or if not water vapor has an effect on the global temperature there will have to be plenty more research on this topic. In Rich’s article it does not state the final thought it only states a fraction of the data collected to prove the point that in the stratosphere water vapor has declined in percentage in the years following 2000. Rich points out; using Solomon’s data, that Solomon agrees with Dessler that in the lower atmospheres vapor levels do have an impact on carbon dioxide levels.
In Rich’s short article she explains briefly the details about the findings of both Dessler and Solomon’s work. With further insight into both of their research the reader can conclude that Rich morphed both of her sources words to fit her article. True, Rich does state both Dessler and Solomon believe the same result about the lower atmosphere but Rich failed to imply that they both believe that this topic needs to be looked into much more, and should not be concluded until more data has been collected. With this Rich should have included into her article that both Dessler and Solomon agree on the same idea about the lower atmosphere vapor levels, and also agree that the information collected is useful but not enough to make a proper conclusion. Also Rich should include that to make this proper conclusion more data and research will have to be added to this cause. Therefore Rich should have explained more about both Dessler’s and Solomon’s work to let the reader know that this thought has still to be changed and altered.
In conclusion, Andrew Dessler and Susan Solomon both agree that in the topic on water vapor and its relation to global temperature is a possibility of climate change but needs more information to give a full conclusion. Laurie Rich’s article, Climate Change Gets Wet, raises concern on the topic of water vapors in relation to climate change hoping to make more researchers and scientists become interested and want to find more data to help with the research. Thus in the end all of this will hopefully pull together information on how to keep the planet a clean and a comfortable home for humans for many years to come.
References
Dessler, Andrew E., and Steven C. Sherwood. A Matter of Humidity. 323. (2009): 1020-1021. Web. 20 Sep 2010. http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/dessler09.pdf
Rich, Laurie. Climate Change Gets Wet 01 Sep 2010: n. pag. Web. 23 Sep 2010. http://discovermagazine.com/2010/may/20-climate-change-gets-wet>.
Solomon, Susan, Karen H. Rosenlof, Robert W. Portmann, John S. Daniel, Sean M. Davis, Todd J. Sanford, and Gian-Kasper Plattner. Contributions of Stratospheric Water Vapor to Decadal Changes in the Rate of Global Warming. 327.5970 (2010): 1219 - 1223. Web. 20 Sep 2010. <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;327/5970/1219>.
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