If atmospheric temperature increases, how does it effect its moisture holding capacity?

Question

If atmospheric temperature increases, how does it effect its moisture holding capacity?

Answer 1

Moisture in air or humidity is simply the amount of water vapor in the air.  If it is saturated with water vapor humidity is 100%.  On a still night it gets colder and in the morning the grass is wet.  Reason?  The holding capacity of the cooling air drops so that the moisture "precipitates" as dew, or when it is really cold, as frost.  

Therefore as temperature increases, the moisture capacity of air increases.

Answer 2

Warm air can hold more water vapour than cold air.This means that cold air can contain less water vapour only.This can be seen by the fact that when warm air is cooled and thereby the dew point temperature is reached,the  excess water vapour starts condensing into water.

Answer 3

I also agree that the word "hold" should not be used.  If you look up the word "hold" in a dictionary, none of the definition of the word "hold" can be used to correctly explain the relationship between the change in temperature and  the ratio of water existing in a gas state versus in a liquid state.  

If you heat up a pot of water, water evaporates ( more water changing to a gas than water vapor condensing to liquid state).  The net result, if you continue this trend, would be that the water will slowly evaporate away.  

If you use the word hold, that means the water is not evaporating with an increase in temperature, but instead air in a heated state somehow has a better ability to grab the water molecules from the pot and hold on to it.  How does air hold on to the water molecules???

I think the explanation of how heat energy will cause the breaking of chemical bonds between water molecules resulting in a change in phase would be a better explanation of what is going on in nature with the change in temperature.

Answer 4

The warmer the parcel of air the lighter it is and the more moisture it can hold.

Answer 5

It increases

Answer 6

The atmosphere can not "hold" moisture.  See the following link.

http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadCl...

As the temperature increases, the rate of water molecules changing from a liquid phase to a gas phase (evaporation) increases while the rate of water vapor changing to a liquid phase decreases (condensation).  So as the temperature climbs, water molecules will more likely be found in a gas phase than in a liquid phase.  Using the term "hold" is not the right term to use in this case.  It is a very common misuse of this word to describe the natural process.