paddler wrote:
When moisture evaporates it doesn't go away, it is still contained in the air that absorbed it.
If that air is cooled down again, say by air conditioning, then the moisture comes back out,
or at least the relative humidity increases. And as far as I know, relative humidity is what
determines how fast we lose moisture from our flutes.
Problem with cooling by air conditioners is that the cooling takes place in a heat exchanger inside the machine, where the moisture in the air condenses out onto the cold fins, and is transported away in the drain pipes leading from the machine. So an air conditioner reduces the relative humidity in the room in both summer and winter.
[quote]If the air carrying the moisture blows away then it is replaced by air from elsewhere,
which by definition should have more moisture than the air that blew away, given that we
are talking about a location that has no more moisture left locally. For an example,
consider the case of inland air heating under a desert sun and rising, inducing a sea
breeze that brings cooler, moister, air in from the sea to the land.
That works for regions that are close to the sea but not for the inland. That's why we in coastal NSW can reasonably expect a wetter future but our inland cities can't. I'd expect the same in the US. Small islands like Ireland I imagine don't really have an "inland" - you're never far enough from the sea - but I'm open to being corrected!
According to the Climate Change Australia website on humidity:
• There is high confidence that inland humidity will decrease in winter and spring as well as annually, and there is medium confidence in declining relative humidity in summer and autumn.
We're clearly going to need to spend more of our time in the pub!