Peak absorption values of ro-vibrational CO lines and H₂O spectral features in VV 114 E SW-s2. Panel a: Peak absorption values of the CO P(J) (circles) and R(J) (triangles) lines. Black filled symbols indicate data, and red symbols show the model prediction. Light-blue markers indicate contaminated lines. Panel b: CO P–R asymmetry for the peak absorption values. Black circles indicate data, with opened symbols indicating doubtful ratios due to contaminating lines other than ¹³CO. Red crosses show model results. The magenta, light-blue, and green curves display the expected trends for several T_app values in the optically thick (solid) and optically thin (dashed) limits. Panels c,d: Comparison between the H₂O peak absorption of 116 spectral features (black circles) and our fiducial model. The contribution by the warm component is shown in green, and the total predicted absorption (warm+hot components) is shown in red. LTE model results with T_app = 400 and 600 K, T_rot = 450 K, and N_H2O = 3 × 10¹⁹ cm⁻² (the same N_H2O as in the fiducial model) are also compared with data. The model-to-observed peak absorption ratios are also displayed. Errorbars in this figure do not include uncertainties from continuum subtraction.