Re:The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human t...
by Out_of_Characte on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @11:46AM
(#28143469)
Air is an insulator, 35 degree weather will cause extreme internal temparatures but 35 degree water allows you to transport all your excess energy to the water. 38 or 40 degree water would be deadly, but I wonder what the air temparature is when it gets that far.
These events are usually short (for TW >35, majority only last an hour, see Sup fig 2), which is perhaps why we are not seeing many deaths associated with them.
With regards to immersing oneself in water, a bathtub is good so long as groundwater is available; if everyone starts filling their tubs for every heat wave it might start becoming more scarce. I would have thought natural bodies of water like the sea would have been a good choice, but the authors point out that in one region where wet bulb temps >35 were happening they also observed frequent sea surface temps >35 too (sup fig 16).
There are ways to survive and you have provided good ones, but they won’t be available to all who experience these events if they continue to increase in number. And excellent point about wildlife! That’s a whole additional side of it that will probably get lost in the mitigation effort…