What is the difference between "liquid water content" and "absolute humidity" in meteorology? Both have units of mass/volume.
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
2
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.
-
$\begingroup$ Thank you the answer and the reference - this really cleared it up for me! $\endgroup$ Dec 18, 2014 at 7:14
-
$\begingroup$ @boxofchalk1 happy to have helped! I was able to learn something new too. $\endgroup$– user889Dec 18, 2014 at 7:15