3. Why is temperature important?

Temperature by itself is often an important factor in protecting your valuables. Temperature directly affects the speed of atoms! The warmer your object gets, the faster the atoms move. This increase in movement, and therefore temperature, whether over an extended period or sudden, can adversely affect your valuable without your knowledge. For example, excessive temperature over time can change the taste of your wine and rapid changes can cause cracking in other types of material.

Temperature is also an important factor in the calculation of relative humidity. RH is “relative” humidity because it changes as the surrounding temperature changes. In addition, the dew point is the temperature for which a fixed amount of water vapor and pressure will form dew. This represents exactly 100% relative humidity!

Given constant water vapor and pressure……

• If the temperature decreases, the RH will increase because the colder air requires less moisture to be saturated.
• If the temperature increases, the RH will decrease because with higher temperature, the air has more space to store the moisture.