Friday Mar. 22, 2013
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Back to Your Roots (6:38)  featuring the Playing For Change band at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver British Columbia.

Today was the first of the 1S1P Assignment #2 due dates.  If you're planning on turning in two reports, one of them should have been turned in today.

A reminder that a Humidity Example Problems Optional Assignment is due at the start of class on Monday.  The Experiment #3 reports and the Expt. #2 revised reports are also due next Monday.

We have a couple more humidity problems to finish up
Example 3


You're given the the mixing ratio = 10.5 g/kg and a relative humidity of 50%.    You need to figure out the air temperature and the dew point temperature.  Here's the play by play solution to the question:

(1) The air contains 10.5 g/kg of water vapor.  This is 50% (half) of what the air could potentially hold.  So the air's capacity, the saturation mixing ratio must be 21 g/kg (you can either do this in your head or use the RH equation following the steps shown above). 

(2) Once you know the saturation mixing ratio you can look up the air temperature in a table (80 F air has a saturation mixing ratio of 21 g/kg)

(3) Then you imagine cooling the air until the RH becomes 100%.  This occurs at 60 F.  The dew point is 60 F.
Example 4
Probably the most difficult problem of the bunch. 

But one of the things we said about dew point is that it has the same job as mixing ratio - it gives you an idea of the actual amount of water vapor in the air.  This problem will show that if you know the dew point, you can quickly figure out the mixing ratio.  Knowing the dew point is equivalent to knowing the mixing ratio.

Here's what we ended up with in class, we were given the air temperature and the dew point temperature.  We were supposed to figure out the mixing ratio and the relative humidity. 


We enter the two temperatures onto a chart and look up the saturation mixing ratio for each.

We ignore the fact that we don't know the mixing ratio.  We do know that if we cool the 90 F air to 50 F the RH will become 100%.  We can set the mixing ratio equal to the value of the saturation mixing ratio at 50 F, 7.5 g/kg.


Remember back to the three earlier examples.  When we cooled air to the the dew point, the mixing ratio didn't change.  So the mixing ratio must have been 7.5 all along.   Once we know the mixing ratio in the 90 F air it is a simple matter to calculate the relative humidity, 25%.

The figure below is on p. 87 in the photocopied ClassNotes.  It explains how you can dry moist air.


At Point 1 we start with some 90 F air with a relative humidity of 25%, fairly dry air.   These are the same numbers in Example Problem #4 last Wednesday.  We imagine cooling this air to the dew point temperature, 50 F, where the relative humidity would reach 100% and a cloud would form (Pt. 2 in the figure above). 

Then we continue to cool the air below the dew point, to 30 F.  Air that is cooled below the dew point finds itself with more water vapor than it can contain.  The excess moisture must condense (we will assume it falls out of the air as rain or snow).  When air reaches 30 F it contains 3 g/kg, less than half the moisture that it originally did (7.5 g/kg).  The air is being warmed back up to 90 F along Path 4.  As it warms the mixing ratio remains constant.  At Point 5, the air now has a RH of only 10%.

Drying moist air is very much like wringing moisture from a wet sponge.


You start to squeeze the sponge and it gets smaller.  That's like cooling the air and reducing the saturation mixing ratio, the air's capacity for water vapor.  At first squeezing the sponge doesn't cause anything to happen (that's like cooling the air, the mixing ratio stays constant as long as the air doesn't lose any water vapor).  Eventually water will start to drop from the sponge (with air this is what happens when you reach the dew point and continue to cool the air below the dew point).  Then you let go of the sponge and let it expand back to its original shape and size (the air warms back to its original temperature).  The sponge (and the air) will be drier than when you started.

This sort of process ("squeezing" water vapor out of moist air by cooling the air below its dew point) happens all the time.  Here are a couple of examples (p. 87 again)


In the winter cold air is brought inside your house or apartment and warmed.  Imagine 30 F air with a RH of 100% (this is a best case scenario, the cold air outdoors usually has a lower dew point and is drier). Bringing the air inside and warming it will cause the RH to drop from 100% to 20%..  Air indoors during the winter is often very dry.  This can cause chapped skin, can irritate nasal passages, and cause cat's fur to become charged with static electricity.

The air in an airplane comes from outside the plane.  The air outside the plane can be very cold (-60 F perhaps) and contains very little water vapor (even if the -60 F air is saturated it would contain essentially no water vapor).  When brought inside and  warmed to a comfortable temperature, the RH of the air in the plane will be very close 0%.  Passengers often complain of dehydration on long airplane flights.  The plane's ventilation system must add moisture to the air so that it doesn't get that dry.

Next a much more important example of drying moist air (see p. 88 in the photocopied ClassNotes).


We start with some moist but unsaturated air (the RH is about 50%) at Point 1 (the air and dew point temperatures would need to be equal in order for the air to be saturated).  As it is moving toward the right the air runs into a mountain and starts to rise.  Rising air expands and cools.   Unsaturated air cools 10 C for every kilometer of altitude gain.  This is known as the dry adiabatic lapse rate and isn't something you need to remember.  So after rising 1 km the air will cool to 10 C which is the dew point.

The air becomes saturated at Point 2 (the air temperature and the dew point are both 10 C).  Would you be able to tell if you were outdoors looking at the mountain?  Yes, you would see a cloud appear. 

Now that the RH = 100%, the saturated air cools at a slower rate than unsaturated air (condensation of water vapor releases latent heat energy inside the rising volume of air, this warming partly offsets the cooling caused by expansion).  We'll use a value of 6 C/km (an average value).  The air cools from 10 C to 4 C in next kilometer up to the top of the mountain.  Because the air is being cooled below its dew point at Point 3, some of the water vapor will condense and fall to the ground as rain.  Moisture is being removed from the air and the value of the mixing ratio (and the dew point temperature) decreases.

At Point 4 the air starts back down the right side of the mountain.  Sinking air is compressed and warms.  As soon as the air starts to sink and warm, the relative humidity drops below 100% and the cloud disappears.  The sinking unsaturated air will warm at the 10 C/km rate. 

At Point 5 the air ends up warmer (24 C vs 20 C) and drier (Td = 4 C vs Td = 10 C) than when it started out.  The downwind side of the mountain is referred to as a "rain shadow" because rain is less likely there than on the upwind side of the mountain.  Rain is less likely because the air is sinking and because the air on the downwind side is drier than it was on the upslope side.

   







We can see the effects of a rainshadow illustrated well in the state of Oregon.  The figure above at left shows the topography (here's the source of that map).  Winds generally blow from west to east across the state. 

Coming off the Pacific Ocean the winds first encounter a coastal range of moutains.  On the precipitation map above at right (source) you see a lot of greens and blue on the western sides of the coastal range.  These colors indicate yearly rainfall totals that range from about 50 to more than 180 inches of rain per year.  temperate rainforests are found in some of these coastal locations.

That's the Willamette River, I think, in between the coastal range and the Cascades.  This valley is somewhat drier than the coast because air moving off the Pacific has lost some of its moisture moving over the coastal range. 

What moisture does remain in the air is removed as the winds move up and over the taller Cascades.  Yearly rainfall is generally less than 20 inches per year on the eastern side, the rainshadow side, of the Cascades.  That's not too much more than Tucson which averages about 12 inches of rain a year.

Most of the year the air that arrives in Arizona comes from the west, from the Pacific Ocean (this changes in the summer).  It usually isn't very moist by the time it reaches Arizona because it has travelled up and over the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and the Sierra Madre mountains further south in Mexico.  The air loses much of its moisture on the western slopes of those mountains. 

Next in our mix of topics was measuring humidity.  One of the ways of measuring humidity is to use a sling (swing might be more descriptive) psychrometer.




A sling psychrometer consists of two thermometers mounted side by side.  One is an ordinary thermometer, the other is covered with a wet piece of cloth.  To make a humidity measurement you swing the psychrometer around for a minute or two and then read the temperatures from the two thermometers.  The difference between the dry and wet bulb temperatures can be used to determine relative humidity and dew point (you look up RH and Td in a table, it's not something you can easily calculate). 

I'm sorry about my tendency to beat some concepts to death, please bear with me.  But hears a pretty good example of where you can take some basic concepts and use them to really understand something else.




One concept that will use again is the fact that when water (a drop of water, water in a glass, etc) is surrounded by saturated air (RH = 100%) any evaporation will be balanced by an equal amount of condensation.  If you step out of a pool on a foggy day you wouldn't dry office.  Water would evaporate from your body but it would be matched with an equal amount of condensation.


The figure shows what will happen as you start to swing the wet bulb thermometer.  Water will begin to evaporate from the wet piece of cloth.  The amount or rate of evaporation will depend on the water temperature (the 80 F value was just made up in this example).  Warm water evaporates at a higher rate than cool water (think of a steaming cup of hot tea and a glass of ice tea).

The evaporation is shown as blue arrows because this will cool the thermometer.  The same thing would happen if you were to step out of a swimming pool on a warm dry day, you would feel cold.  Swamp coolers would work well (too well sometimes) on a day like this.

The figure at upper left also shows one arrow of condensation.  The amount or rate of condensation depends on how much water vapor is in the air surrounding the thermometer.  In this case (low relative humidity) there isn't much water vapor.  The condensation arrow is orange because the condensation will release latent heat and warm the thermometer.
Because there is more evaporation (4 arrows) than condensation (1 arrow) the wet bulb thermometer will drop. 


The wet thermometer will cool but there's a limit to how cold it will get.  We imagine that the wet bulb thermometer has cooled to 60 F.  Because the wet piece of cloth is cooler, the rate of evaporation has decreased.  The wet bulb thermometer has cooled to a temperature where the evaporation and condensation are in balance.  The thermometer won't cool any further.

You would measure a large difference (20 F) between the dry and wet bulb thermometers on a day like this when the air is relatively dry.

Here's the situation on a moister day.  There's enough moisture in the air to provide 3 arrows of condensation.  You wouldn't feel as cold if you stepped out of a pool on a warm humid day like this.  Swamp coolers wouldn't provide much cooling on a day like this.


The wet thermometer only cools a little bit before the rates of evaporation and condensation are equal.

Here's a summary


A large difference between the dry and wet bulb temperatures means the relative humidity is low.  A small difference means the RH is higher.
No difference (the bottom figure) means the relative humidity is 100%. 



Evaporative cooling will make you feel cold if you get out of a swimming pool on a warm dry day.  You won't feel as cold if the air is humid and the relative humidity is high.  This might remind you of something similar that we covered earlier in the semester.




We learned that a 40 F day with 30 MPH winds will feel colder (because of increased transport of energy away from your body by convection) than a 40 F day with no wind.  The wind chill temperature tells you how much colder it will feel ( a thermometer would measure the same temperature on both the calm and the windy day).  If your body isn't able to keep up with the heat loss, you can get hypothermia and die.

There's something like that involving heat and humidity.  Your body tries to stay cool by perspiring.  You would feel hot on a dry 105 F day.  You'll feel even hotter on a 105 F day with high relative humidity because your sweat won't evaporate as quickly.  The heat index measures how much hotter you'd feel. The combination of heat and high humidity is a serious, potentially deadly, weather hazard because it can cause heatstroke (hyperthermia).