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These temperatures in high humidity can be deadly even to healthy and fit humans as our bodies are left without a way to cool down. Currently, they have humidit
by Isinlor 7y ago
These temperatures in high humidity can be deadly even to healthy and fit humans as our bodies are left without a way to cool down. Currently, they have humidity around 10-20% so it affects the most vulnerable, but global warming may lead to making parts of the world literally deadly to every human being...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
The wet-bulb temperature (WBT) is the temperature read by a thermometer covered in water-soaked cloth (wet-bulb thermometer) over which air is passed.
Sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F) is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at this temperature our bodies switch from shedding heat to the environment, to gaining heat from it.[8] Thus 35 °C (95 °F) is the threshold beyond which the body is no longer able to adequately cool itself. A study by NOAA from 2013 concluded that heat stress will reduce labor capacity considerably under current emissions scenarios.[9]
A 2010 study concluded that under a worst-case scenario for global warming with temperatures 12 °C (22 °F) higher than 2007, the wet-bulb temperature limit for humans could be exceeded around much of the world in future centuries.[10] A 2015 study concluded that parts of the globe could become uninhabitable.[11] An example of the threshold at which the human body is no longer able to cool itself and begins to overheat is a humidity level of 50% and a high heat of 46 °C (115 °F), as this would indicate a wet-bulb temperature of 35 °C (95 °F).
The 2015 Indian heat wave saw wet-bulb temperatures in Andhra Pradesh reach 30 °C (86 °F). A similar wet-bulb temperature was reached during the 1995 Chicago heat wave.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ramraj07 7y agoWhat caused Chicago of all places to reach that temperature?
- joezydeco 7y agoChicago regularly gets heat waves in that range, but moisture coming from the plains via heavy rains and/or agricultural crops contributes to the humidity levels which really are the killer. A temperature inversion also happened that July, so no wind and pollution stagnated over the city.
- gonzo41 7y agoThanks for posting this. It's something that's really hard to communicate about climate change to people. It's also super depressing. I went down with heat stroke once and I get know what this is like. I was in hospital for 4 days after a close brush with kidney failure. So many people just think it'll be just a bit hotter in the future.
- jackfraser 7y agoTell me again how buying a Tesla will save this village
- colordrops 7y agoTell me again what you are doing to slow climate change.
- jey 7y agoIt's actually a really interesting question, but also very hard to answer in practice. The positive answer would involve the ability of competitive markets[1] to serve as efficient mechanisms that coordinate the activities of people across the globe to collectively increase wealth/output[2]. With greater total surplus, it becomes relatively "cheaper" [on a societal level] to solve problems like saving the village. (Of course, this leaves out the public goods problem of actually provisioning the village-saving in the case that the villagers don't get lifted up directly by economic growth and buy it for themselves.) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_equilibrium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_equilibrium 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfar...
- dang 7y ago"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- theli0nheart 7y agoYour comment includes footnote references but none of the footnotes themselves.
- tryptophan 7y agoI think its a copy paste from the linked wikipedia page, with links from there too.
- jobigoud 7y ago> fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan; This is scary, what's a good way to survive for someone that doesn't have access to a bunker or AC? Immersing oneself in water in a bathtub?
- wrong_variable 7y agoYes, the global poor living in high humid areas have always done that. So have Elephants and Hippos.
- ajross 7y agoA tub will work, sure, as long as it's pulled from a large body of water that hasn't warmed up with the air. Hopping in the local lake is an obvious choice. But in a detached demographic sense: effectively everyone lives in a city in the modern world, and while their housing might not be air conditioned most of the major buildings are. In an emergency like this everyone would just crowd into office buildings and shopping malls. That's not to say this wouldn't be horrifying, but it's not the kind of existential social crisis people tend to imagine. Cooling ourselves down in a heat wave, in the modern world, is a solved problem at least as far as keeping ourselves alive goes.
- TheCoelacanth 7y agoOffices and shopping malls are upper-middle class things in India. They would not come close to holding the entire population. There would be millions of people dying if temperatures got that high.
- ajross 7y agoI'd want to see cites for that, honestly. Obviously India's commerce centers can't come close to handling a billion shoppers, but there's enough floor space in the urban core of Bangalore to house the at-risk population for a 72 hour heat wave. The point is emergency management here. And I'd bet anything that somewhere there's a workable plan drawn up for exactly this kind of occurrence.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- amai 7y agoHow are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index related?
- freehunter 7y agoThey're two attempts to measure the same thing, but with different results. Heat index is measured assuming a human walking at 3mph in the shade and attempts to show how hot the air feels when you take into account the humidity (and associated lack of cooling from perspiration). Wet-bulb is the measurement of the lowest possible temperature a human body can achieve under current ambient temperatures and humidity (taking into account current wind speed). Basically the air temperature minus the ability to cool yourself by sweating given the current wind speed. They're both designed to show how hot the air feels to your body rather than just air temperature, just with different calculations and assumptions.
- Shorel 7y agoHow long can we stay in a sauna before it is deadly?
- elorant 7y agoMost saunas have relatively low levels of humidity, between 20% and 30%. It's hard to keep high humidity levels when temperature rises. Other than that, it's generally suggested to not exceed 20 minutes in a sauna. Steam rooms on the other hand have higher humidity levels but lower temperature and it's not allowed to stay more than 15 minutes inside. From personal experience I've never used a sauna for more than 10 minutes and I always carry a bottle of water with me inside.
- Gibbon1 7y agoI've been in some rooms that are kept at 120 degrees and 80% humidity. You can work for about an 45 minutes to an hour at most (Adult male). Working being monkeying with stuff in an electrical cabinet. I think you'd be in serious trouble after 2-3 hours.
- modzu 7y agohere in my part of canada temperatures are regularly deadly, ie below 0°C. its a legitimate problem for homeless and otherwise vulnerable people. while some parts of the world warm to become uninhabitable, others will warm to the opposite.
- selimthegrim 7y agoWhere is this? N Alberta?