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Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):

weatherwest ("Daniel Swain") wrote:

With #ClimateChange, we see warming but also widespread increases in atmospheric "thirstiness" (i.e., evaporative demand/vapor pressure deficit). A warmer, thirstier atmosphere means (potentially) drier, more flammable vegetation in absence of compensating precip increases.

Attachments:

• Figure from Swain et al. 2025. Caption reads: Saturation vapour pressure (solid black line), absolute humidity (dot-dashed black line; assuming 40% relative humidity (RH)) and vapour pressure deficit (VPD) (dashed red line; the difference between saturation and actual vapour pressures, assuming 40% RH) as a function of realistic Earth surface air temperatures. A nonlinear (exponential) increase in the VPD will result from a linear increase in temperature even under the assumption of constant RH.