What is the difference between "liquid water content" and "absolute humidity" in meteorology? Both have units of mass/volume.
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According to the online chapter Water Vapor (University of British Columbia), the two variables you ask about are defined as:
Absolute humidity
$$\rho_{v}=\frac{m_{water\ vapour}}{volume}$$
Liquid water content
$$\rho_{LWC}=\frac{m_{liquid\ water}}{volume}$$
The main difference is that absolute humidity measures the mass of water vapour and the LWC measures the mass of suspended or falling liquid water content in a unit volume of air. A handy definition linking the two terms is (from the linked document):
LWC is the liquid-water analogy to the absolute humidity for water vapor.
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$\begingroup$ Thank you the answer and the reference - this really cleared it up for me! $\endgroup$ – boxofchalk1 Dec 18 '14 at 7:14
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$\begingroup$ @boxofchalk1 happy to have helped! I was able to learn something new too. $\endgroup$ – user889 Dec 18 '14 at 7:15
