What allows air to hold water as vapor in one
case, but forces the vapor to condense in another?
Water vapor is one of the gases in air. Unlike nitrogen
and oxygen which are constant in the bottom
100 km of the atmosphere, water-vapor concentration
can vary widely in time and space. Most people are
familiar with relative humidity as a measure of water-
vapor concentration because it affects our body’s
moisture and heat regulation. But other humidity
variables are much more useful in other contexts.
Storms get much of their energy from water vapor
— when water vapor condenses or freezes it releases
latent heat. For this reason we carefully track water
vapor as it rises in buoyant thermals or is carried by
horizontal winds. The amount of moisture available
to a storm also regulates the amount of rain or snow
precipitating out.
What allows air to hold water as vapor in one
case, but forces the vapor to condense in another?
This depends on a concept called “saturation”?
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