Above the temperature of a wet light bulb of 35 Celsius, the body can not cool down, as sweat on the skin can no longer evaporate. Prolonged exposure to such conditions can be fatal, even for healthy people. Lower but still high wet bulb temperatures can affect health and productivity in other ways.
Me. Zhang warned that the impact on the health of her study was uncertain, as she and her colleagues were only looking at how high the light bulb temperatures would become, not how often the extremes would reach or how long it would last. “Thorough knowledge about the health impact of intensity, frequency and duration of high wet light bulb temperatures is needed,” she said.
The study was published in the journal Nature Geosciences.
The target of 1.5 degrees warming was the lower of two set by the 2015 agreement in Paris to fight climate change. But the world has warmed by about 1 degree since 1900, and the ability to stay below target is slowly slipping away, as reducing emissions from countries, both achieved and promised, far falls short of what is needed.
An increasing amount of research has found that global warming has so far indirectly taken an increasing toll on human health through drought and crop failures, extreme storms and floods, a greater spread of certain insect-borne diseases and other consequences.
But heat also has direct effects on the human body. Even relatively dry heat can be enough to kill people, as evidenced by the toll of heat waves over the past year. And the combination of heat and high humidity has already reached dangerous levels in parts of the world.
In a study looking at weather data last year, two sites were found in the tropics that already had numerous temperature bulbs above 35 degrees, and many sites, including some along the southeast coast of the United States, had TW had lectures. from 31 to 33 degrees. But in most cases, the extreme conditions lasted only an hour or two.
The effects of heat and humidity are worse for women, the elderly and those with chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure, said Glen Kenny, a professor of physiology at the University of Ottawa, who studies how the body handles heat stress.