Changes in the distribution of water vapor in response to anthropogenic forcing will be a major factor determining the warming the Earth experiences over the next century, so it is important to validate climate models' distribution of water vapor. In this work the three-dimensional distribution of specific humidity in state-of-the-art climate models is compared to measurements from the AIRS satellite system. We find the majority of models have a pattern of drier than observed conditions (by 10--25%) in the tropics below 800 hPa, but 25--100% too moist conditions between 300 and 600 hPa, especially in the extra-tropics. Analysis of the accuracy and sampling biases of the AIRS measurements suggests that these differences are due to systematic model errors, which might affect the model-estimated range of climate warming anticipated over the next century.