AOSC 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Advection, The Cooler, Radiative Cooling
6 Mar 2018
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Document Summary
Clouds are circulation of water in the atmosphere. The water vapor content (humidity) inside this air parcel can be expressed in a number of ways. Absolute humidity=mass of water vapor/volume of air. With the same amount of water vapor in a parcel of air, an increase in volume decreases absolute humidity. Specific humidity=mass of water vapor/total mass of air. The specific humidity does not change as air rises and descends. The average specific humidity for each latitude, the highest average values are observed in the tropics and the lowest values in polar regions. The process of evaporation in a closed contained will proceed until there are as many molecules returned to the liquid as there are escaping. At this point the vapor is said to be saturated, and the pressure of that vapor is called saturated vapor pressure. Saturation vapor pressure increases with increasing temperature. At a temperature of 10 c, the saturation pressure is about 12mb.
