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Saturated Mixing Ratio
The saturated mixing ratio, ws, with respect to water is defined as the ratio of the mass mvs of water vapor in a given volume of air that is saturated with respect to a plane surface of pur water to the mass md of the dry air:
ws = mvs/md
However, because both water vapor and dry air obey the idea gas equation:
where p'vs is the partial density of water vapor required to saturate air with respect to water at temperature T and p''d is the partial density of the dry air, and p is the total pressure. By combining the above two equations we get:
For temperature in the earth's atmosphere p >> es, and so:
And so, the stauration mixing ratio, at a given temperature, is inversely proportional to the total temperature.
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