Isn’t water vapor a more important greenhouse gas than CO2?
Water vapor is, by volume, the most prevalent greenhouse gas in our atmosphere. It plays an important role in climate, and scientists are working to learn more about it. Basically, though, we know that evaporation, condensation and cloud formation is, in part, a process of removing heat from the earth’s surface and transferring/releasing this heat into the air. This is why, in moist tropical areas, we don’t notice a big difference between the earth’s surface temperature and the air temperature. In drier, desert areas, however, this difference is much greater because there is less moisture in the air to draw the heat up. Yet, water vapor is not the driving cause of climate change. Our forcing of very large amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (like methane) into the air is the driving cause of climate change. This is because CO2 and these other greenhouse gases absorb heat from the sun and trap it in the earth’s atmosphere. Simply put, the more CO2 we force into the air, the warmer
