I think I always forget what wet bulb is exactly because these events are relatively rare, geographically isolated, and don’t last long enough to be the specific cause of death. We get lots of heat death but not (35C100%H) heat death. The article says that we won’t see sustained wet bulb temps this century.
Interesting takeaway:
"“What this new model shows is, when you take into account the limitations of human physiology, these upper wet-bulb temperature limits look as though they are much lower under certain types of conditions.”
Since I can never remember what wet bulb is, this video does a good job explaining it:
Sorry, nonsense
People have been dying from heat in droves since decades ago. I recall 10-20 years ago a heatwave that overflowed morgues in France.
Not saying that climate change isn’t real or not disastrous, it is and so much more.
Just that this title is misleading at best
Those were heat waves, an infrequent hot period in the middle of otherwise normal weather. But now this is the new normal, this is what people are expected to live in and work under. That heat wave in France is now the everyday weather. That’s why this matters and why you sound so insignificant.
There are examples of exceptional heatwaves like the one you’re thinking about. The article is about testing people under controlled conditions to figure out exactly where the point that things go from ‘healthy adults will be fine’ to ‘not just the sick, pregnant, young, and elderly suffer, but huge chunks of the population die’
The “first time”? Maybe in a controlled environment, but certainly not the first time. People already die from heat exhaustion around the world.
Also, the deadly factor really seems to be time rather than heat and humidity. Saunas are 65-90c with very high humidity and those are generally fine as long as you don’t stay in too long.
Tell me that you haven’t read it without telling me that you haven’t read it
Owen has been put into the climate chamber by Jem Cheng, a research fellow at the Heat and Health Research Centre at the University of Sydney.
It’s part of a world-first study all about finding out at what point heat becomes deadly. Fifteen years ago, scientists proposed an environmental threshold at which no person would be able to survive for six hours.
But these conditions have never been tested on humans.
Until now.
“This study is all about human survivability,” Dr Cheng says.
“So we are the first to actually put people in these environments to actually see, physiologically, what is happening to their core temperature or to their heart rate.
What this new model shows is, when you take into account the limitations of human physiology, these upper wet-bulb temperature limits look as though they are much lower under certain types of conditions.”
I misread lasted as tasted. I’ve never been curious about that.