1,2,1,2,1,2,1,1- 1Faculty of Earth Sciences and Spatial Management, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland (przemyslaw.wyszynski@umk.pl)
- 2Centre for Climate Change Research, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland (cccr@umk.pl)
Water vapour is a key greenhouse gas, responsible for about 75% of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect. As global temperatures rise, atmospheric water vapour is expected to increase due to the higher heat capacity of a warmer atmosphere. Therefore, understanding historical moisture levels is essential for studying long-term climate change.
However, historical humidity data for the Arctic and Subarctic regions are very rare because measuring humidity in cold climates was difficult. One of the few studies on this topic is by Wyszyński and Przybylak (2014), who analysed data from the First International Polar Year (IPY-1, 1882–1883) for the entire Arctic.
Our study focuses on historical measurements from three specific subarctic stations: Nuuk (Southwest Greenland), and Hebron and Nain (coastal part of the Labrador Peninsula). We analysed a shared five-year period from 1907 to 1911. The data were collected from the Climate Data from the Overseas Stations of the German Marine Observatory for the Canadian stations, and the Danish Meteorological Yearbooks for Nuuk. Observations were recorded three times a day (at 05:00, 13:00, and 21:00, or 07:00, 14:00, and 21:00 local time).
Based on these historical records, we calculated the climatological characteristics of both water vapour pressure and relative humidity. Finally, we compared these early 20th-century results with present-day conditions and data from the IPY-1 period to determine how atmospheric humidity has changed over the past century.
(The work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, project No. 2020/39/B/ST10/00653).
References:
Climate Data from the Overseas Stations of the Deutsche Seewarte (German Marine Observatory) in Canada. 2022. DWD, Marine Climate Monitoring, Hamburg.
Meteorological Yearbooks, 1907-1911. Danish Meteorological Institute. Copenhagen.
Wyszyński P., Przybylak R. 2014. Variability of humidity conditions in the Arctic during the first International Polar Year, 1882-83. Polar Research, 33, 23896, http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/polar.v33.23896
How to cite: Wyszyński, P., Przybylak, R., Araźny, A., Singh, G., and Chmist, K.: Atmospheric humidity in SW Greenland and the Labrador Peninsula: Comparing 1907–1911 to present-day conditions, EMS Annual Meeting 2026, Utrecht, Netherlands, 6–11 Sep 2026, EMS2026-300, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2026-300, 2026.
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