why doesn’t humidity/high dew point help drought?

141 viewsOtherPlanetary Science

Obviously it’s not going to help the way stable rainfall would, but I’m in the southern US with up to 93% humidity and a dew point of 77 for going on 2 months. It seems like that could help the ground retain enough moisture to alleviate (not completely prevent) major drought, wildfires, and erosion during flash floods/storms.

In: Planetary Science

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The high dew point also coincides with high heat, which means the air is being sucked off the surface and not returning to the ground. If the temperature never gets low enough to push the humidity back to 100% then it will never condense into liquid water (and when it finally does the air had sucked up so much water by that point it turns into a hurricane)

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