What is dew point?
Here’s the technical definition: the temperature to which air must be cooled to reach saturation. It sounds tricky but it’s really very simple. Take a chunk of air today: The temperature is 80 degrees and the dew point is 60 degrees Fahrenheit. If you cooled the air down to 60 degrees, it would reach saturation and, ta dah! A little cloud would form! Another way to look at dew point: It is a measure of the amount of moisture in the air. And your hair can track the change. When the dew point is high, such as 70 degrees, there is lots of moisture in the air. Strands of hair absorb the moisture, so forget about style! Curly hair like mine gets big; thin, straight hair gets really flat! On the charts, a dew point of 70 gets you a bad hair day. When the dew point is low, around 50 degrees, there is less moisture for your hair to absorb. You are in control of your hair style. So a dew point of 50 and you have a good hair day! Now if you have no hair, dew point can be a bit confusing. So here
The technical definition of the dew point (or dew point temperature) – is that it is temperature at which water vapor in the air will condense into liquid form if the air temperature lowers to match that dew point temperature. The dew point can tell us many useful things about the weather. Water vapor is a gas, and is one of several gases that make up the atmosphere, with nitrogen and oxygen making up the bulk of it. The water vapor content in the air can vary, depending on the weather conditions. The dew point is an indication of just how much moisture is in the air. If the dew point is high (like in the 60s or 70s), then that indicates a lot of water vapor in the air. If the dew point is low (like in the 40s or lower), then that indicates less water vapor, hence the air is drier. The dew point is either lower or the same as the air temperature. It is never higher. When the air temperature comes down to the dew point, the water vapor will condense into tiny water droplets. That is how
Water is everywhere on Earth and it’s everywhere in the air as a gas or vapor. Depending upon the air temperature, water can occupy up to 4% of the volume of air. That does not sound like much but a slight change can produce clouds, it can drive storms, or it can make us uncomfortable. There are two common ways to describe how much water vapor is floating in the air. One way is relative humidity and the other is dew point temperature, commonly called dew point and written as one word- dewpoint. Relative humidity describes how far the air is from saturation and it’s useful for figuring the amount of evaporation. It’s good to know if you are involved in agriculture where you apply water or pesticides to large areas, or if you are in forestry and you are considering burning. Relative humidity is an important indicator of the rate of moisture and heat loss by plants and animals. When relative humidity is high it means the air is more saturated and not much water can evaporate into it. When
