Is the rate at which water evaporates more dependent on relative % humidity or dew point temperature? eli5

Question

Is the rate at which water evaporates more dependent on relative % humidity or dew point temperature? eli5

In: 1

Answer 1

They’re both kind of important. You need energy to vaporize water and you need a receptive volume of air to take in that evaporated water.

You need a wetbulb temperature to calculate humidity though, so I would say that the dewpoint temperature is the more important of the two.

Look up some of Howard Penman’s equations. He did a lot of this work back in the 1940’s.