Does water vapour cause climate change?

[arno]

According to the BBC, water vapour is the main cause for climate change, and not carbon dioxide

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4419880.stm

[hoon]

Isn't this basic science? Water vapor (among other gasses) is responsible for keeping a planet heated, and not a frozen ball of rock like Mars. Maintaining that delicate balance of how much water is in the air is important of course, but noting that water is causing the atmosphere to retain heat is... nothing new.

[tracy]

Yes, this is not some groundbreaking new assertion. In fact it is things like this - feedback mechanisms (both positive and negative) that make climate change modelling so hard. If it was a simple matter of "C02 creates more warmth" we'd have figured it all out a while ago. More warmth can produce more water vapor, but depending on what type of clouds are formed you can end up with trapped heat, or more solar radiation reflected and a cooling effect. There are many other feedback mechanisms that I simply can't recall and many more I've never heard of. How and when they respond, and how they interact makes for a very difficult and complex problem indeed.

[debs]

Warming starts with CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Warmer climate means more evaporated water in the atmosphere. Guess what? Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. So climate gets warmer. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

This isn't a story that undermines or changes the prevailing scientific view. This may allow some fine tuning of the models. Some skeptics had argued with the results of the models because they didn't believe the contribution of water vapor. This may force them to reevaluate their view.

[MarkuisMellvile]

Originally Posted by arno

According to the BBC, water vapour is the main cause for climate change, and not carbon dioxide

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4419880.stm

[Zoltan Paul Jambor]

Water vapor is just another clatalyst to climate change. That's all.
ZPJ