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The vapor pressure of water is the pressure exerted by molecules of water vapor in gaseous form (whether pure or in a mixture with other gases such as air). The saturation vapor pressure is the pressure at which water vapor is in thermodynamic equilibrium with its condensed state .
According to the American Meteorological Society Glossary of Meteorology, saturation vapor pressure properly refers to the equilibrium vapor pressure of water above a flat surface of liquid water or solid ice, and is a function only of temperature and whether the condensed phase is liquid or solid. [17]
Therefore, the August–Roche–Magnus equation implies that saturation water vapor pressure changes approximately exponentially with temperature under typical atmospheric conditions, and hence the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere increases by about 7% for every 1 °C rise in temperature.
In a scientific notion, the relative humidity (or ) of an air-water mixture is defined as the ratio of the partial pressure of water vapor in air to the saturation vapor pressure of water at the same temperature, usually expressed as a percentage: [11] [12] [5] = % /
where temperature T is in degrees Celsius (°C) and saturation vapor pressure P is in kilopascals (kPa). According to Monteith and Unsworth, "Values of saturation vapour pressure from Tetens' formula are within 1 Pa of exact values up to 35 °C." Murray (1967) provides Tetens' equation for temperatures below 0 °C: [3]
This may be written in the following form, known as the Ostwald–Freundlich equation: =, where is the actual vapour pressure, is the saturated vapour pressure when the surface is flat, is the liquid/vapor surface tension, is the molar volume of the liquid, is the universal gas constant, is the radius of the droplet, and is temperature.
P s (T) is the saturation vapor pressure in hPa; exp(x) is the exponential function; T is the air temperature in degrees Celsius; Buck (1981) also lists enhancement factors for a temperature range of −80 to 50 °C (−112 to 122 °F) at pressures of 1,000 mb, 500 mb, and 250 mb. These coefficients are listed in the table below.
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