Significance
Due to its dependence on radiation balance, dew amounts can reach a theoretical maximum of about 0.8 mm per night, measured values, however, rarely exceeding 0.5 mm. In most climates of the world, the annual average is too small to compete with rain. In regions with considerable dry seasons, adapted plants like lichen or pine seedlings benefit from dew. Large-scale, natural irrigation without rainfall, such as in the Atacama Desert and Namib desert, however, is mostly attributed to fog water.
Another effect of dew on plants is its role as a habitat for pathogens such as the fungus Phytophthora infestans which infects potato plants.
In Greek mythology, Ersa is the goddess of dew.
Dew, known in Hebrew as טל (tal), is very important in the Jewish religion for agricultural and theological purposes. On the first day of Passover, the Chazan, dressed in a white kittel, leads a service in which he prays for dew between that point and Sukkot. During the rainy season between December and Passover there are also additions in the Amidah for blessed dew to come together with rain. There are many midrashim that refer to dew as being the tool for ultimate resurrection.
In the Biblical Old Testament dew is used symbolically in Deuteronomy 32:2: "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass."
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Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)