The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance (2020)

Post by brandall10 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

poorjohnmacafee wrote: post #147

ghshephard wrote: post #67

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Having lived in Singapore for five years (2012-2017) (and worked out in the field for about 50% of that time) I can say that Singapore is one of the milder places to live. It never ever gets particularly hot (I genuinely can't recall a 100+ degree day in the entire time I was there), and the humidity, while, "sticky" is never really extreme. The thing that gets to you is that the climate never seems to change (with t…

> I can say that Singapore is one of the milder places to live. It never ever gets particularly hot Singapore is almost exactly on the equator. UV readings get up to 11 each day (extreme), whereas the most I ever saw in say SF was 5. Your experience is one experience, mine is that it's a sauna every day of the year. I've experienced extremely hot days in terms of subjective experience of WBT as explained in article.…

Post by specialist » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

kortex wrote: post #244

specialist wrote: post #229

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Ya, for messaging, "wet bulb" doesn't work well. We need a more intuitive phrase, like a "wind chill factor" for heat + humidity = danger. Edit: chewing on "wet heat factor". What do you think? Cliches like "but it's a 'dry heat' harhar" are already common. So "wet heat" might click.

https://www.weather.gov/ama/heatindex

Post by WillDaSilva » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

cma wrote: post #115

WillDaSilva wrote: post #5

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Swamp coolers do not work in high humidity. Running cool water from underground over oneself works, but is unsustainable and impractical. Going underground to someplace cool is also sometimes an option that does not require electricity, but is often impractical and highly situational. Ultimately all that really works in our modern world at scale in such a heat wave is powered air conditioning, so ensuring that electr…

You could potentially heat up a dessicant to dry it out and use that indoors to survive the humidity without having to go underground or have AC.

Post by capitol_ » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #252

boplicity wrote: post #2

Kim Stanley Robinson's recent book The Ministry For the Future starts with a very disturbing scenario: A heatwave with a "web bulb" temperature of 35 Celsius. It turns out, in those temperatures, even young and healthy people can't survive. Combined with power outages, as happens in the book, everyone living under such a heat wave will likely die. It's looking increasingly likely that such heatwaves are possible in t…

I have travelled to two countries where heat can hit that temperature, and they do not have the luxury of any AC, or in some cases even a fridge. A few cities around the world do reach 35 or higher regularly during summer. And in a some of those people have lived for thousands of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_average_temp...

Post by giantg2 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

numpad0 wrote: post #202

baybal2 wrote: post #166

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Karachi, and Sindh at large often goes through periods of +35 wet bulb. People can jump into fountains, or other bodies of water, hide at home, airconned buildings. In the end, people can try to brave it, and wait for the relatively cool evening.

Wet bulb thermometer is the kind that a pair of thermometers are mounted together with one wrapped in wet cotton and the other dry. Typically between the two glass tubes is a little look up table that gives humidity from current dry bulb temperature and delta between the two. I don't know what exactly environment reaching 35C/95F web bulb means, but considering 1) it indicates temperature of a thermometer cooled by e…