Summer can be a bittersweet season for me. The warm weather and activities like swimming, boating, hiking, camping, canoing, BBQs etc can be a lot of fun.
Being a fair skinned person has always made me very susceptible to sunburns with very little effort on my part. Even most sun screens do little to protect me.
After a decade of working in a dusty environment I then added lung damage to the problem. Heat and humidity, especially humidity can seriously impact my breathing. In hot weather, my best move is to retreat to an air conditioned setting and keep outdoor activity to a minimum.
Rising Global Temperatures
Over the last 40 years global temperatures has risen by about 2 degrees. It doesn’t seem like much until you take note of the doubling in the frequency of dangerous heat and humidity waves. In the last few years I started hearing a new (to me) term in relation to heat waves — heat dome.
A heat dome occurs when a high pressure area persists over an area for several days or weeks. The temperatures within the dome will push the level of humidity higher making for increasingly dangerous conditions.
A few days and then cooler temps move in is not uncommon and will usually be referred to more as a heat wave. When it persists or moves very slowly across a region it is referred to as a dome. The Dust Bowl years of the 1930s were heat domes. Last summer much of the west in both Canada and the US experienced heat domes.
Climate change has the danger of these heat domes increasing in both frequency and intensity bringing drought and crop failures along with the dangers of heat and humidity to people.
The Impact of Heat & Humidity
I’ve always been mindful of not only the temperature during the summer but also how much humidity accompanies it. While being out in the sun in the heat can trigger the skin issues for me, it’s the humidity which really leaves me struggling with the breathing issues if I’m out in it too long.
A hot day with low humidity I can enjoy being outside in the shade. A hot day with high humidity, outside needs to be limited and air conditioned spaces is best for me.
As the temperatures rise and our bodies start to respond to it, we start to sweat. Sweating is the body’s cooling system when its able to evaporate. As humidity rises the ability to evaporate the sweat drops and core body temp starts to rise.
Wet Bulb Temperature
I recently learned there is another temperature we don’t often hear about, yet, it helps in measuring how dangerous heat and humidity is. It’s called the web bulb effect.
It gets it name from how the temperature is taken. A cloth is wrapped around the end of a thermometer to test how much evaporation can decrease the temperature. Humans are essentially wet bulbs as we cool via evaporation.
The heat waves experienced in places like the Persian Gulf and Pakistan last year saw wet bulb temperatures around 95F (35C). In temperatures like that shade, lots of water and light clothing is not enough to help the body cool.
Temps at that level make it impossible to sweat effectively which causes:
- overheating
- organ failure
- death
Expressing heat and humidity as wet bulb temperatures helps us to better understand the risk to our health. The groups most vulerable are:
- elderly (80-90% of heat wave casualities are in this group)
- people with health conditions
- people working outside
- people without access to cooling services
Being younger and healthier doesn’t give you a pass, just lets you have a bit more tolerance.
What Is Too Hot?
A study in 2010 concluded a wet bulb temp of 95F (35C) would be the upper limit of safety for the human body. That temp would be equal to 95F at 100% humidity or 115F (46C) at 50% humidity.
A more recent study in a controlled environment using telemetry pills to measure core temperature found the upper limit is much lower then previously thought.
They determined the upper limit to be 88F (31C) which is equal to 88F at 100% humidity and 100F (38C) at 60% humidity.
Notice in both studies, the upper limit was reached at a lower temperature with higher humidity than with lower humidity.
If you’d like to figure out the web bulb temperature there is an online calculator you can use here. Note: it works best with Celsius temps.
Stay Safe in the Heat
As much fun as summer is, be mindful of the heat and take measures to have a safe and healthy summer.
- stay well hydrated and no .. Alcohol is not used for hydrating you
- find cool areas to rest
- add rest time when engaged in activities or work, especially outside
- avoid midday activity if you can, the sun is hottest then
- during extreme heat, find a cooling center, a fan will not be effective enough
- use cool showers or baths to cool down
- avoid cooking
- never leave anyone, especially children and pets, in a car during hot weather
NOTE: Header Image from Pixabay
Shadowspub is a writer from Ontario, Canada. She writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc.
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STOPUntil we can do something impactful about climate change,
I think humans have got to rely on air conditioners more. During the heat in my country I mostly try to be around colder places more even though I don't have any condition that I think makes the heat worse for me, I only do that to maintain balance.
Air conditioning will be very important but that also means that countries need to up their game on their power grids to make sure the additional demand during heat waves can be managed.
Yeah. Or individuals can have small solar panels for this purpose too 🌚.
Fascinating info @shadowspub! We definitely permanently live in a heat dome mid-summer, with extremely high humidity in our subtropical climate. I would gladly live anywhere else, especially the months of December to February, it gets unbearable!
Have a great week.
We're coming into the hottest time of the year ... had some rain today but quickly followed by more humidity which is forecast to continue to build in the coming days.
We are having a heatwave, and as I live beside the sea, I spent five hours down on our beach.
Great advice, when we lived in the South of Spain and it would regularly hit 40 in the summer.
Learnt to not cook and more importantly, to keep the sun out, keep blinds and curtains/drapes closed that way you do not need to open windows.
there are some vines tend to grow up over a couple of my windows. In the past I would have pulled them down, now I leave them over the summer and pull them down in the fall. During the summer they reduce the sun intensity coming through my windows. Sort of shading my windows naturally
That is natural shading at its best!
Very interesting information 🤓
Yes, it is noticeable changing the last yearssss.
Especially living in southern Spain. We are moving out. As it is getting toooo hot 🥵
Europe is getting hit hard I've been seeing and as @tengolotodo has noted in Great Britain. Not sure these days where you can go that you're not going to experience it at part of the year.
Yes, it is @shadowspub 😔
It looks like it has spread everywhere in the world. But it would be great to live somewhere were still 4 seasons are. Meaning the hot 🥵 summer will be shorter. Not 6 months winter and 6 months summer like it is now in Spain. One extreme to the other extreme. There is not really a middle ground anymore. The houses are not build for any of them. And if I look around me in Spain, how it changed the last years… it is desert like 🏜 slowly it is turning into it. 🥵🏜