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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: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday March 14 2021, @11:23PM (11 children)
Only to a point. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @11:48PM
You can't actually go from wet-bulb to heat index like that. They aren't measuring the same thing, so it is possible for the same wet-bulb to match a range of heat index measures and vice versa.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 15 2021, @01:15AM (9 children)
This is true, if they turn their brains off entirely and have zero access to anyone who hasn't. We're not minnows who can only live in one part of a specific stream, we are the best species there has ever been at surviving unpleasant environments. Because we're really fucking crafty.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 15 2021, @01:39AM (8 children)
That makes no sense
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 15 2021, @04:05AM
No, it makes perfect sense. You're just denying it for religious reasons. You can tell because if they were scientific reasons, arguments shooting your position completely to shit would change your opinion.
Human beings are quite adaptable biologically but we're astoundingly adaptable technologically. We can live in Antarctica, under water, out in space, in deadly hot deserts, and yes, even in hot, muggy bullshit. Because we figure out how to and we do it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @05:32AM (6 children)
He is obviously talking about people using technological means like AC to stay ahead and you are talking about the more poverty-stricken masses that won't have such options to create artificial climates.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 15 2021, @01:40PM (5 children)
Actually, I was talking about any number of ways to stay cool. Going swimming or hanging in a basement during the heat of the day doesn't exactly take tons of money or cutting edge technology. If you can't think of that simple of a thing I don't think your genes are going to stay in the pool though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 15 2021, @07:54PM (4 children)
So a billion subsistence farmers in Africa and Asia are just going to be able to go for a dip to cool off while their crops die are they?
Or maybe chill out in the basement which they don't have?
You live in a fantasy world.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 16 2021, @02:08PM (3 children)
And you're being gradeschool foolish. Basements don't require concrete and rebar, just something to dig with and something to produce shade above. And crops don't require work in the hottest part of the day; they don't much care when you do the work aside from at planting and harvest times. Make some more excuses that're easily solved so I can show you how much of partisan zombie they make you sound like.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 16 2021, @07:19PM (2 children)
You are truly an astounding level of stupid, and in fact I believe you may be one of the first members of the Cult of Science! "We can do anything! Because SCIENCE!!"
Humorously enough you are also the narrow minded libertarian type that would refuse the economic and labor support to help these areas adapt to changing climate. Wait, that isn't actually funny, but your hypocrisy merits a sardonic grin.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday March 16 2021, @07:58PM
It is fairly stupid, but mostly because of the provincial ignorance that thinks that because we live like this everybody else can too.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 19 2021, @12:13AM
Hysterical fool. We can't do anything but we are damned well able to figure out or remember really simple shit that people have already had figured out for thousands of years.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.