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Humidity is a measure of water vapor in the atmosphere. There are measures of absolute humidity, which is the grams of water vapor present per cubic meter of air. Specific humidity is the grams of water per kilogram of air. Then there’s the one people are most familiar with, relative humidity, which is the percentage of water vapor present in the air relative to the maximum it could hold at its temperature. Knowing the humidity is useful for many things including assessing forest or soil moisture, predicting thunderstorm development and severity, calculating ice formation or estimating air quality.   

NASA’s ground, airborne, and satellite instruments measure humidity in a variety of ways and offer hundreds of datasets with the information and direct applications for air quality, disease, extreme heat, and tropical cyclone research.

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This image from the AIRS instrument shows surface air temperature over North America and the Arctic on December 22nd, 2022.
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MLS instrument data
Access MLS data from GES DISC via OPeNDAP
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Discover and Visualize Humidity Data
NASA data help us understand Earth's changing systems in more detail than ever before, and visualizations bring these data to life, making Earth science concepts accessible, beautiful, and impactful.
Data visualization is a powerful tool for analysis, trend and pattern recognition, and communication. Our resources help you find world-class data visualizations to complement and enhance your research. We also have tools and tutorials to help you translate humidity data into compelling visuals.
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This rectangular image shows the relative humidity of areas across the world. Colors on the map range from white to dark red to show low to high humidity.
This image from the Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing (GEOS-FP) system research model show relative humidity levels around the world on Feb. 5, 2025. The image is produced by combining millions of weather observations with a predictive model to create a global best estimate of weather conditions. Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

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