1. Ventilation effects on humidity measurements in thermometer screens
- Author
-
R. G. Harrison and Curtis R. Wood
- Subjects
Atmospheric Science ,Materials science ,Hygrometer ,Wet-bulb temperature ,law ,Thermometer ,System of measurement ,Ventilation (architecture) ,Humidity ,Relative humidity ,Natural ventilation ,Remote sensing ,law.invention - Abstract
Relative humidity (RH) measurements, as derived from wet-bulb and dry-bulb thermometers operated as a psychrometer within a thermometer screen, have limited accuracy because of natural ventilation variations. Standard RH calculations generally assume a fixed screen psychrometer coefficient, but this is too small during poor ventilation. By comparing a reference humidity probe—exposed within a screen containing a psychrometer—with wind-speed measurements under controlled conditions, a wind-speed correction for the screen psychrometer coefficient has been derived and applicable when 2-metre wind speeds fall below 3 ms–1. Applying this to hourly-averaged data reduced the mean moist RH bias of the psychrometer (over the reference probe) from 1.2% to 0.4%, and reduced the inter-quartile range of the RH differences from 2.0% to 0.8%. This correction is particularly amenable to automatic measurement systems.
- Published
- 2011
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