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Global heating pushes tropical regions towards limits of human livability:
Humans’ ability to regulate their body heat is dependent upon the temperature and humidity of the surrounding air. We have a core body temperature that stays relatively stable at 37C (98.6F), while our skin is cooler to allow heat to flow away from the inner body. But should the wet-bulb temperature – a measure of air temperature and humidity – pass 35C, high skin temperature means the body is unable to cool itself, with potentially deadly consequences.
“If it is too humid our bodies can’t cool off by evaporating sweat – this is why humidity is important when we consider livability in a hot place,” said Yi Zhang, a Princeton University researcher who led the new study, published in Nature Geoscience. “High body core temperatures are dangerous or even lethal.”
The research team looked at various historical data and simulations to determine how wet-bulb temperature extremes will change as the planet continues to heat up, discovering that these extremes in the tropics increase at around the same rate as the tropical mean temperature.
[...] Dangerous conditions in the tropics will unfold even before the 1.5C threshold, however, with the paper warning that 1C of extreme wet-bulb temperature increase “could have adverse health impact equivalent to that of several degrees of temperature increase”. The world has already warmed by around 1.1C on average due to human activity and although governments vowed in the Paris climate agreement to hold temperatures to 1.5C, scientists have warned this limit could be breached within a decade.
This has potentially dire implications for a huge swathe of humanity. Around 40% of the world’s population currently lives in tropical countries, with this proportion set to expand to half of the global population by 2050 due to the large proportion of young people in region. The Princeton research was centered on latitudes found between 20 degrees north, a line that cuts through Mexico, Libya and India, to 20 degrees south, which goes through Brazil, Madagascar and the northern reaches of Australia.
Journal Reference:
Yi Zhang, Isaac Held, Stephan Fueglistaler. Projections of tropical heat stress constrained by atmospheric dynamics, Nature Geoscience (DOI: 10.1038/s41561-021-00695-3)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @02:22AM (21 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian [wikipedia.org]
It is a shame Nature is publishing lies of this level of stupidity, now.
(Score: 5, Informative) by hendrikboom on Sunday March 14 2021, @02:39AM (9 children)
If you look at the graph (and its inset, and it's mark for 2016) you'll see that it's now significantly warmer than anytime in the holocene climatic optimum you mention.
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @02:53AM (8 children)
Even if you can cross your eyes in such a way as to unsee the peaks of all the plethora of colored curves on said graph...
...you still have THIS one to explain away:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/All_palaeotemps.svg [wikimedia.org]
That pesky Eemian interglacial. The link you managed to not notice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @03:48AM (1 child)
Maybe in a few million years another species will have a shot.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @09:02AM
I only hope our greasy, overweight bodies will provide them the same bounty of oil that fueled our civilization.
(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Sunday March 14 2021, @12:09PM (2 children)
Ever heard of "evaporation"?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @03:34PM (1 child)
> Ever heard of "evaporation"?
Touche, environmental whackos.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 16 2021, @08:14AM
You really shot yourself in the foot there.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday March 15 2021, @01:31AM
Looks like we're not quite at the Eemian peak yet, but the projection for 2100 certainly is above it. That rise is something we should prevent.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday March 15 2021, @01:54PM (1 child)
Did humans live in the tropics during the Eemian?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @08:43PM
Yes. Definitely. There has been continuous human habitation, by all available evidence, in southern Africa at least as well as parts of Asia, since pre-sapiens humans were all there was.
And unless you go to the southern tip of Africa (basically, parts of South Africa; not even the whole country) you're in the tropics.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @03:32AM (8 children)
I have been in many places where 44C or even 48C was normal. Not last week, try the 1980's. This was in parts of Africa (the 48C) in the tropics and in parts of N.America. Humans cope just fine. Its the pansies that whine. I don't mind the heat at all. But it is worrying that cold places like Alaska and Siberia are defrosting to mud, mosquitos and unknown old diseases.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Sunday March 14 2021, @03:55AM (5 children)
Alaska is a land of mosquitoes already. Has been for a very long time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Sunday March 14 2021, @12:12PM (4 children)
It's the seasons that are changing.
Additional datapoint - I've been in Lappland on the very day *every single mosquito* woke up. (Late May, IIRC, back in the early 90s, no idea what it would be now.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Sunday March 14 2021, @04:59PM (3 children)
I was up in Alaska for a couple weeks in June of 2013. I thought growing up in Michigan I knew what mosquitoes were. I was wrong.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 15 2021, @01:19AM
Heard Alaska is bad. Wouldn't know personally but I can say from experience and without equivocation that you do not want to ride a motorcycle through Louisiana in the summer around dusk wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and sunglasses. Regular mosquitoes are annoying but tens of thousands of 70mph mosquitoes at once are even less pleasant.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday March 15 2021, @07:54AM
One weird thing is that bried hiking trip completely desensitised me to all flying insects. I literally had a wasp land on my nose about a month later, and I didn't bat an eyelid the whole time, despite others in the room getting in a right flap.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @08:14PM
Weirdest experience I had in Thailand was when I was out canoeing near dusk. It was great, warm weather, minimal bugs, catching some fish, picking some morning glory, going to have a nice meal back home. Then the sun set. And as if it was some huge alarm clock went off, just an unimaginably thick swarm of mosquitoes appeared seemingly out of nowhere. I have never seen anything even remotely close to it. You know how sometimes you see a flock of birds so thick they can kind of blot out at least part of the sky? It was the exact same thing, with mosquitoes. It had to have been in the millions.
I was wearing minimal clothes, as was my wife. It was bad enough that we forced to jump out of the boat, back into the water, and use the canoe for cover. Weird thing too is that it was only in this one area. Everywhere else I ever traveled in the country, not a problem in the least. I mean they have mosquitoes but nothing like *that* monstrosity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @09:04AM
> Humans cope just fine.
I hear plenty of land is available in central Libya for humans.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday March 15 2021, @03:20AM
Indeed. I took this after working outdoors all day.
http://doomgold.com/misc/thermometer.jpg [doomgold.com]
Just another normal day in the desert, suitable for scaring those who've never been out of range of an air conditioner.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @11:33AM
Easy. By hunting and gathering small game. How much small game is there to hunt and gather in major cities? How long can the people of New York survive on a diet of rats?
It's our technology (refrigeration, automation) that allows us to feed so many people in hyper-dense clusters of society known as cities. It's our global society that enables mass production of those technologies. It's our current stable climate that enables that global society.
So, please, get your head out of your ass. Or is it there because you already have nothing else to eat?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday March 14 2021, @12:06PM
"While temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were warmer than average during the summers, the Tropics and parts of the Southern Hemisphere were colder than average."
Your point was?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves