Vapour pressure of water


The vapour pressure of water is the pressure at which water vapour is in thermodynamic equilibrium with its condensed state. At higher pressures water would condense. The water vapour pressure is the partial pressure of water vapour in any gas mixture in equilibrium with solid or liquid water. As for other substances, water vapour pressure is a function of temperature and can be determined with the Clausius–Clapeyron relation.

Approximation formulas

There are many published approximations for calculating saturated vapour pressure over water and over ice. Some of these are :
where temperature is in °C and vapour pressure is in kilopascals
where temperature is in °C and is in kPa
where is in °C and is in kPa.
Here is a comparison of the accuracies of these different explicit formulations, showing saturation vapour pressures for liquid water in kPa, calculated at six temperatures with their percentage error from the table values of Lide :
A more detailed discussion of accuracy and considerations of the inaccuracy in temperature measurements is presented in Alduchov and Eskridge. The analysis here shows the simple unattributed formula and the Antoine equation are reasonably accurate at 100 °C, but quite poor for lower temperatures above freezing. Tetens is much more accurate over the range from 0 to 50 °C and very competitive at 75 °C, but Antoine's is superior at 75 °C and above. The unattributed formula must have zero error at around 26 °C, but is of very poor accuracy outside a very narrow range. Tetens' equations are generally much more accurate and arguably simpler for use at everyday temperatures. As expected, Buck's equation for > 0 °C is significantly more accurate than Tetens, and its superiority increases markedly above 50 °C, though it is more complicated to use. The Buck equation is even superior to the more complex Goff-Gratch equation over the range needed for practical meteorology.

Numerical approximations

For serious computation, Lowe developed two pairs of equations for temperatures above and below freezing, with different levels of accuracy. They are all very accurate but use nested polynomials for very efficient computation. However, there are more recent reviews of possibly superior formulations, notably Wexler, reported by Flatau et al..

Graphical pressure dependency on temperature