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Relative humidity is an important metric used in weather forecasts and reports, as it is an indicator of the likelihood of precipitation, dew, or fog. In hot summer weather, a rise in relative humidity increases the apparent temperature to humans (and other animals) by hindering the evaporation of perspiration from the skin.
The humidity adjustment approximately amounts to one Fahrenheit degree for every millibar by which the partial pressure of water in the atmosphere exceeds 10 millibars (10 hPa). At the time the humidex was originally developed in 1965, Canada was still on the Fahrenheit scale , and thus the humidex was originally based on that.
The representation is made on a temperature-relative humidity, instead of a standard psychrometric chart. The comfort zone in blue represents the 90% of acceptability, which means the conditions between -0.5 and +0.5 PMV, or PPD < 10%.
A given value of relative humidity causes larger increases in the heat index at higher temperatures. For example, at approximately 27 °C (81 °F), the heat index will agree with the actual temperature if the relative humidity is 45%, but at 43 °C (109 °F), any relative-humidity reading above 18% will make the heat index higher than 43 °C. [5]
Determining relative humidity: The percent relative humidity can be located at the intersection of the vertical dry bulb and diagonally down sloping wet bulb temperature lines. Metric (SI): Using a dry bulb of 25 °C and a wet bulb of 20 °C, read the relative humidity at approximately 63.5%.
When the two tendencies are in balance— and the air and food are stable—the air's relative humidity (expressed as a fraction instead of as a percentage) is taken to be the water activity, a w. Thus, water activity is the thermodynamic activity of water as solvent and the relative humidity of the surrounding air at equilibrium.
Table 2: Critical relative humidities of mixtures of salts at 30°C (values are percent relative humidity). As shown, the effect of salt mixing is most dramatic in the case of ammonium nitrate with urea. This mixture has an extremely low critical relative humidity and can therefore only be used in liquid fertilisers (so called UAN-solutions).
T w = Natural wet-bulb temperature (combined with dry-bulb temperature indicates humidity) T g = Globe thermometer temperature (measured with a globe thermometer, also known as a black globe thermometer) T d = Dry-bulb temperature (actual air temperature) Temperatures may be in either Celsius or Fahrenheit; Indoors the following formula is used: