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posted by mrpg on Monday July 19 2021, @04:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the 35°C-TW dept.

How hot is too hot for the human body?:

Some climate models predict that we're going to start hitting wet-bulb temperatures over 95 °F by the middle of the 21st century. Other researchers say we're already there. In a study published in 2020, researchers showed that some places in the subtropics have already reported such conditions—and they're getting more common.

While most researchers agree that a wet-bulb temperature of 95 °F is unlivable for most humans, the reality is that less extreme conditions can be deadly too. We've only hit those wet-bulb temperatures on Earth a few times, but heat kills people around the world every year.

[...] Heat acclimatization builds up over time: It can start in as little as a few days, and the whole process can take six weeks or longer, Hanna says. People who are more acclimatized to heat sweat more, and their sweat is more diluted, meaning they lose fewer electrolytes through their sweat. This can protect the body from dehydration and heart and kidney problems, Hanna says.

Acclimatization is why heat waves in cooler places, or heat waves early in summer, are more likely to be deadly than the same conditions in hotter places or later in summer. It's not just that places like Canada and Seattle are less likely to have air conditioning, although infrastructure is another big factor in how deadly heat waves will be. Residents of cooler places are also just less acclimatized to the heat, so wet-bulb temperatures below 95 °F can be deadly.

Wet-bulb temperature


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19 2021, @04:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19 2021, @04:56PM (#1157937)

    Nothing in science tells you whether you are "right" or "wrong," only that you are or are not (or can't tell) consistent with observation and experience. All science is model based. Models can be "wrong" if they fail to describe observation, like how the Rayleigh=Jeans law broke down as you approached ultraviolet light, but some models describe things pretty well even though they might be very complicated. Even models that are obviously wrong can be useful if they are used where the model is accurate, such as over a narrow range where the relationship is linear, or basically anything that engineers deal with in their everyday work, where classical physics based models are more than sufficient to do the job.

    Regarding physics based climate models, I tend to put a lot of value into what they predict, especially if many independently built models generally point in the same direction. You have to act on the best information you have available, and if most of the models are suggesting dramatic changes are in store over relatively short time scales, it would be very irresponsible to claim that since we don't know if these models are "right" that we should not do anything. Perhaps if you only had one model, but regarding climate models, that is far from being the case.