Multiple southern states and a few midwestern states are at “extreme threat” levels of “wet bulb temperature”.
I posted this elsewhere but think it’s relevant here:
For the past couple of years it’s been a lot of news of “Hottest Day Ever” to which my favorite response has always been a slightly cheeky “So far!”, but I’ve realized with the recent coverage of large swaths of the US reaching deadly wet bulb temps that that’s going to change. The headlines won’t be for the hottest day, they’ll be for the highest death count, and nobody will say the second part but we’ll all be thinking it.
This article doesn’t actually mention the values of the temperatures (probably to cover relieve themselves of the responsibility of those details) so I’ll go to their first link, the theHill.com one. They don’t directly give a value in their text either…
Reading that, the exact same thing is happening as that twitter screenshot thread with the map of the southern US color coded for temperatures.
Basically, wet bulb globe temperature is being conflated with wet bulb temperature. Globe is in the sun, the other is not. The thehill.com source uses a chart and description for globe, doesn’t mention the word globe anywhere, then says you can’t survive more than 35C with a link to a study. That 35C/88F is the limit for a wet bulb temperature, not wet bulb globe temperature. Obviously measuring something in the sun is going to give a higher number than in the shade. You can’t say “it’s this temperature” referencing wet bulb globe and also say “you couldn’t survive that temperature” using the “survivability” limit of wet bulb without any sort of qualification/clarification as to the distinction. Obviously it’s hotter in the sun. If that same temperature is reached in the shade it’s that much hotter in the sun.
Sure, we’re all facing extreme climate apocalypse, but this is annoying that the terms are being used as the same thing, and I’d argue detrimental to the cause. When these things are incorrect, it’s just more ammunition for deniers and doubters to point at to justify their continued intentional ignorance.
Here in Florida, it feels like you’re swimming in lava right now
I woke up to TWO lawn mowers going today. It feels like 100 out and its the hottest day of the week. I hate these people!!! I actually wish it would get hotter! Not really though for the sane peoples sakes.
I’ve been wondering whether it’ll be possible to make skin-friendly formulations of the sky-cooling paints, which might help with this sort of situation. NightHawkInLight just released a YouTube video about a way to make a version of the pigment using items from the grocery and hardware stores, and the final result was Calcium Carbonate nanospheres. It seems like it should be possible to make a skin-compatible paint from this, much like the titanium oxide based sunscreens, with the advantage that this one would actively cool you by about four degrees centigrade, which is really quite a lot in this kind of scenario.
The video in question: https://youtu.be/KDRnEm-B3AI
I think one trick to that working is using a very thick coat of the paint. It needs to be thick enough to scatter light like using the same properties as snow. A thick coating like that all over your skin would probable block sweating and create a dangerous health issue.
I wonder. He did need the snow-scattering effect to get the barium-based pigment to work, but it seems like the dense packing achieved by the varied sizes of nanoparticles might suffice for light rejection without that effect. It didn’t sound like he re-tested that with the new recipe.
Tech Ingredients also covered cooling paint and referenced the NightHawkInLight Video but they went into a bit more on application. It still needed a thick coat. https://youtu.be/dNs_kNilSjk
Well, clothes made with the right pigments might work in a similar way. But regular light clothes aren’t enough in a wet bulb event. Regular light clothes can keep you from getting further overheated due to sunlight, but if the ambient air temperature and humidity is such that you can’t get evaporative cooling from your sweat, you’re still in trouble. Sky-cooling pigments can cool you below the ambient air temperature by up to 4°C even in direct sunlight, which could be life-saving in certain circumstances.