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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Ecol Lett. 2023 May 10;26(7):1029–1049. doi: 10.1111/ele.14228

FIGURE 3.

FIGURE 3

The total amount of water the air can hold, expressed here as saturation vapour pressure (Es), increases exponentially with temperature and is estimated as a function of temperature using the Tetens equation. The actual amount of water in the air, expressed here as vapour pressure (Ea), can be derived from relative humidity (RH) as Ea = RH/100 * Es. The vapour pressure deficit (VPD) is the absolute difference between Es and Ea and is an important metric of atmospheric moisture because it has a near linear relationship with evaporative potential. Thus, as temperature warms, for a given decrease in RH, there will be a larger increase in VPD and the amount of water stress mosquitoes experience.