The surface tension of a liquid, which drives most free-surface flows at small scales, is often measured with the pendant drop method due to its simplicity and reliability. When the drop is suspended in air, controlling the ambient temperature and humidity is usually an afterthought, resulting in evaporation of the drop during the measurement. Here, we investigate the effect of evaporation on the measured surface tension using experiments and numerical simulations. In the experiments, we measured the evolution of the droplet temperature, which can be drastically reduced by $\mathrm{\Delta }T\approx {10}^{\circ }\mathrm{C}$ due to evaporative cooling, thereby altering the measured surface tension by more than 1 mN/m. This finding can be reproduced by numerical simulations, which additionally allow for controlled investigations of the individual influences of further effects on the pendant drop method, namely, shape deformations by evaporation-driven flows in the gas-phase and in the liquid-phase, including the resulting Marangoni flow. We provide a simple passive method to control the relative humidity without requiring additional instrumentation. Our findings are particularly pertinent to Marangoni flows, which are driven by surface tension gradients and which are consequently highly sensitive to measurement inaccuracies. We apply our method with different aqueous mixtures of glycerol and various diols. Our results and insights have implications for various applications, ranging from inkjet printing to agricultural sprays. Finally, we meticulously documented our setup and procedure for future reference.

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• Evaporation
• Surface tension effects