Climatology

1987 Edition

Humidity

  • Rhodes W. Fairbridge
  • John E. Oliver
Reference work entry
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30749-4_87
How to cite
Humidity refers to the water vapor content of air. Several ways of expressing humidity are:

  • Absolute Humidity (also known as vapor concentration or vapor density). For a moist parcel of air the ratio of the mass of water vapor to the volume of the parcel is called the absolute humidity, i.e., the density of the water vapor. It is expressed in grams of water vapor per cubic meter or by engineers (as in air conditioning) in grains per cubic foot (1 grain = 0.0648 gram and 1 cubic foot = 28,317 cm3). For meteorologists the absolute humidity is not very useful since it neglects questions of pressure.

  • Specific Humidity. This is the ratio of the mass of water vapor to the mass of air, expressed as grams of vapor per kilogram of air or as grains per pound (in air conditioning). This figure may be quoted regardless of temperature and volume (related to the atmospheric pressure), therefore for meteorology, it is a much more useful expression than absolute humidity. For most purposes, the...
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Further reading

  1. Heymsfield A.J., Miloshevich L.M., 1995. Relative humidity and temperature influences on cirrus formation and evolution: Observations from wave clouds and FIRE II. J Atmos Sci 52 (23): 4302–4326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. DeCosmo J., Katsaros K.B., Smith S.D., et al., 1996. Air–sea exchange of water vapor and sensible heat: The humidity exchange over the sea (HEXOS) results. J Geophys Res–Oceans 101 (C5): 12001–12016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Soden B.J., Fu R., 1995. A satellite analysis of deep convection, upper–tropospheric humidity, and the greenhouse–effect. J Climate 8 (10): 2333–2351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

References

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Cross-references

Copyright information

© Van Nostrand Reinhold 1987

Authors and Affiliations

  • Rhodes W. Fairbridge
  • John E. Oliver

There are no affiliations available