Article: Most Important Gas Affecting Global Climate

one of the most important gases affecting global warming is incredibly familiar to us, it is water vapor.  Atmospheric water insulates the earth and traps heat in.  Even after years of intense study, scientists were unable to discover how strong the effect was and how large a part it played in global warming.  A Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist, Andrew Dessler and his colleagues, analyzed global water vapor and temperature for the lower atmosphere, and found that warming, driven by carbon dioxide and other gases, allows the air to hold more moisture air and this increases the amout of water vapor in the atmosphere.  This is because the carbon dioxide and other gases allow the air to hold the moisture in.