STATISTICAL MODEL FOR THE SURFACE RELATIVE HUMIDITY.

Abstract

The frequency distribution of relative humidity is studied. It is shown that the beta distribution is the model for frequency distributions of relative humidity observations. The standard chi-square ( chi **2) test measures the goodness of fit and of the beta distribution model to the observed data base. Ninety distributions of daily, mean 5-, 10-, and 15-day, and mean monthly relative humidity data sets from 19 U. S. stations are examined. At the 0. 05 level of significance, the tests reject only 5% of the mean monthly and 3% of the daily and the mean 5-, 10-, and 15-day distributions. The hypothesis that relative humidity follows a beta distribution is not rejected.