Recent work has re-evaluated the quality of spectral line databases of water vapour at wavelengths shorter than 1 micron, and indicated that a re-evaluation of longer wavelength bands are needed. New temperature and pressure dependent measurements of the spectra of water vapour absorption spectra, for both the pure and air-broadened cases, have now been completed at the NERC Molecular Spectroscopy Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, for wavelengths greater than 1 micron. The measured absorbances are compared with line-by-line generated absorbances, calculated using spectroscopic data from HITRAN 2000 spectral lines in a forward model, for the 2900-4300 cm-1, 5000-5700 cm-1, 6600-7600 cm-1 and 8000-9200 cm-1 regions. The differences between the absorbances are used to generate "correction factors" for the line intensities in HITRAN-2000 line strengths. This talk will present the impact of using these correction factors on estimates of the global clear-sky solar absorption by water vapour using a detailed line-by-line radiation model coupled to a discrete-ordinate scattering code. The possible role of water dimers and 'continua' in accounting for the differences will also be discussed.