Extreme heat is here

Greetings, dear friends of Project Hope. As we know, it is a fact that climate change is warming many areas of the planet, and although some climate models predict that by the end of the century the temperature in some of these areas would rise above what the human body is capable of withstanding, some scientists seem to be convinced that this extreme warming could not only come sooner, but is already here.

The increase of the humid heat in some regions is alarming. Image credit: pixabay.com.

These scientists, a team made up of researchers from the United States and Great Britain, have reached this worrying conclusion by comparing data from climate stations around the world, finding that wet bulb temperatures above the 27-35 °C range have doubled over the past 40 years.

Wet bulb temperature is a measure of heat, basically taken with a mercury thermometer that has the bulb wrapped in a water-soaked cotton cloth and is used to measure the wet air temperature. This parameter is related to the thermal sensation and is used to evaluate the influence of the humidity of the environment on the comfort of people; being 35 °C our physiological limit, and values higher than this have adverse effects on our concentration and productivity, even on our health.

Although climate models projected that warming would exceed 35°C by the middle of the 21st century, extensive study of data from weather stations revealed that in some subtropical coastal regions it has already exceeded 35°C, and that extreme moist heat has even doubled in frequency from 1979 to 2017.

The hottest areas of the world

The study of the data showed that the highest frequency of hot spots, with wet bulb temperatures above 31°C, emerged on the east coast of India, Pakistan and northwest India, and the coasts of the Red Sea, the Gulf of California and the southern Gulf of Mexico. Particularly in some areas of Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, the lethal threshold of 35°C has been crossed repeatedly for one or two hours a day.

Map of global warming, temperature anomalies in °C. Source: Wikimedia commons.

A silent killer

These data are alarming, the humidity of the air intensifies the heat, and we are not only talking about the comfort of an environment or the thermal sensation of the exterior, we are talking about an element capable of killing, it is enough to refer to the last heat wave that was experienced in Europe and that left a great number of deaths in its wake. Humid heat is very dangerous, people cool their bodies by sweating, which works well in a dry climate, but when the environment is already saturated with water, the evaporation on our skin decreases, making it more difficult to remove excess heat and in some cases almost impossible. And when this cooling process is no longer possible, the body temperature rises beyond the tolerable range for our body.

Heat waves have already hit us several times. Image credit: pxhere.com.

Without a doubt we are one step away from crossing a line that was thought to be more distant, which should set off all the alarms and put into motion all the plans designed to stop global warming, since we are not only talking about changes in the seasons, but also about increases in the temperature of the humid bulb that can go from a few hours a day to several days a year in the regions of the tropics, and humid heat is not only a strong oppressor but also capable of killing us.

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Thanks for coming by to read friends, I hope these data will help to make us aware of the direction we are taking. See you next time.

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References

Wikipedia.com. Temperatura de bulbo humedo.

Colin Raymond, Tom Matthews and Radley M. Horton. The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance, 2020. Article online