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. My gf, a local here, also decries the heat. I personally cannot go running before 5:30pm. I got a major sunburn on my back at 5:30pm the time I tried running shirtless at east coast park. Granted, I am pale.

Really? London is 6 today, was 7 last week and 8 earlier this year.

I do also concur with the GP that Singapore is relatively mild as far as equatorial/tropical climates go. India, the Middle East, the Philippines and even Australia are sometimes much more oppressive.

The hottest day ever recorded in Singapore was 37c, whereas London is 38c and SF is apparently 41c. Of course, Singapore is more humid (and thus higher WBT) - but it's also much more consistent. In theory that would make it easier to acclimate..... but then Singaporeans seem to run their AC set to freezing.

https://images.app.goo.gl/P4YtYRLvT5XVcn168

Look at this map of max temperatures and note that the equator runs through a band of relatively low max temperatures: Indonesia, northern South America, and the more southern part of Africa show bands of conspicuous coolness. The hottest max temperatures are in places like southern North America, India, Northern Africa, and Australia; locations that are in fact very far away from the equator.

The max temperatures of a place is caused by many things, such as proximity to water and local wind currents, but one driving reason is relatively simple: because of the tilt of the earth, every day on the equator is 12 hours. North or south of the equator, on the summer solstice, you can get 15 hour days, depending on latitude. The summer is a period of continuously intense solar heating. Again, there are other factors, but the sun is the driving force.

I once visited Kuwait in August, and it was 52 degrees in the shade with near-100% humidity. I genuinely do not understand how some people survive there today without aircon, much less how they will do so if temps go up a few more degrees.

In the time I spent in Dubai (about six months) in comparison, I had to seek shelter from the heat/sun a half-dozen times, and came close to heat-stroking a bunch of times. That was after 4+ years in Singapore.

I drank a lot of water in Singapore - but never, in a million years would I have gone on a trek like MacRitchie reservoir in Dubai - and in Singapore I took my 65 year old mother through the entire loop.

Just completely different environments - Singapore is not the type of environment being discussed in the original article.

Living in both San Diego and now Denver, they hit 11 quite regularly.