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For the first time, humans were exposed to a deadly combination of heat and humidity. Here's how long they lasted - ABC News (www.abc.net.au)

submitted 2 years ago by Aradina@lemmy.ml to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 65 points 2 years ago

Oh my god this article lay out. Just put sand in my eyes.

What was their conclusion?

[-] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 79 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Reader mode of Firefox helped me be able to read the content of the article, despite the unacceptable layout.

Here's the short version:
Wet-bulb weather is when, because of a combination of humidity and heat, you can't naturally cool off with things like sweat.
There are certain combinations where the weather only needs to be 25.8C for a health younger person, or 21.9C for an elderly person for "wet-bulb" to be achieved.
Climate change is real, and it's causing more instances of "wet-bulb" weather.
Outside activities may not be possible in the summer in certain parts of the world, people will die, the rich will move.

[-] CyberMonkey404@lemmy.ml 23 points 2 years ago

only needs to be 25.8C for a health younger person, or 21.9C for an elderly person

That's disturbingly low

[-] admin@lemmy.haley.io 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It’s also at 100% humidity in case that wasn’t clear.

Edit: ok so what he posted wasn’t wrong but the study said that it could be as low as that for some groups of people. For the average person it’s almost 10 degrees C higher which is lower than it used to be.

However for heat sensitive people (not sure what that means) it can be disturbingly low

[-] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

So it’s more like ~35C, but it used to be 40? Is that because of constant heat exposure? Like, is my heat tolerance better in the winter?

[-] admin@lemmy.haley.io 6 points 2 years ago

It seems like it used to be 35° but now it’s ~34°.

I don’t have access to the actually study but I would hypothesize that it’s likely because we are seeing more studies about things like this and as we collect more data that’s changing these values to be closer to what we see in the real world.