The deadly temperatures of “wet” suffocating the eastern United States

and The dome of the repressive heat East United States attracted this week, which prompted the National Weather Service (NWS) to problem Heat warnings of about 170 million Americans. What is more mud is that extreme humidity makes high temperatures feel hotter.

Severe heat and moisture make a fatal group. The human body reduces its temperature by sweating, and when the sweat evaporates, the surface of the skin cools. moisture Slow down This process is down, which increases the risk of developing heat. To extrapolate the physiological effect combined with heat and humidity, meteorologists look at wet bopy. This measurement mainly represents the amount of thermal stress that the body faces under warm hot conditions. It is also a decisive scale for to understand Human survival in the changing climate.

“The wet urine temperature is literally the temperature of the wet heat bulb, which is traditionally measured by placing a small wet sock at the end of the heat scale,” said David Rumbs, a professor of Earth sciences and planets at the University of California-Birkley. Similar to a person sweating, the slow wet heat scale cools by evaporation of water, “but the wet bipping scale is not like a person in some important methods,” he explained.

Humans generate body temperature, which must be watered in the air. “Therefore, everything else is equal, the person who smells of sweat will be warmer than a wet lamp,” said Rumbs. When the wet hybrid temperature approaches 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 ° C)-the average human body temperature-is very difficult to maintain a safe internal temperature. He explained that this may lead to a severe disease associated with heat or even death.

Experts have long believed that the wet polypillary temperature is 35 ° C (equal to 95 degrees Fahrenheit at 100 % moisture or 115 degrees Fahrenheit at 50 % moisture) the threshold that the human body no longer was to cool itself. In recent years, however, their researchers Find Evidence that this threshold is actually much lower.

“Based on our research, the temperature of the wet lamp is about 87 degrees Fahrenheit (30.6 ° C) in the 100 % humidity is the decisive threshold that humans cannot maintain a stable basic temperature if they are exposed to these conditions for hours at one time,” said Cat Fischer, a doctoral candidate at the Human Episode Lab in Penn State University, he said to Gizmodo.

Taking into account the wet temperature in mind with the air temperature, wind speed, cloud covering and sunscreen, meteorologists give the spherical spherical temperature (WBGT), which is comprehensive Measure From thermal stress in direct sunlight. On Tuesday, July 29, nws I mentioned In the 1980s, WBGT is estimated at the 90s Fahrenheit (the top twenties to the mid -thirties) across most of the United States of East, especially in the southeast and west.

WBGT values higher than 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 ° C) extreme and can be incentivize Thermal stress in only 15 minutes when working or exercising in direct sunlight, according to NWS. Weather officials expect these circumstances to continue until Wednesday, July 29, before the Heat dome was dissipated later in the week.

In the long run, the dangerous wet temperature events here to stay. “The global warming caused by a person leads the temperature of wet temperatures, which causes even healthy people near the physiological limit. This limit is real.” He explained that the human body is unable physiologically to hunt wet temperatures around or higher than its internal temperature.

With the high temperature of the air, it can carry more moisture, which increases the frequency and intensity of severe wet temperatures. Climate models indicate that certain regions of the world can see moisture temperatures regularly at 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 ° C) during the thirty to 50 years, according to what it mentioned. Nassa. In the United States, the Middle West countries like Arkansas, Missouri and Iowa are likely to reach a critical wet temperature within 50 years.

“For 300,000 years of our genus, there was no need to tolerate wet temperatures because it is likely that it did not happen as a natural part of the weather throughout that time,” said Rums. “Global warming changes this, quickly.”

Severe heat is already the most dangerous weather risk in American data from Disease control and prevention centers (CDC) It was found that nearly 2000 Americans die from heat -related reasons for the year, ABC News Reports. some Experts We believe that the death toll has been reduced. Understanding the limits of human survival in a warmer world is literally a matter of life or death. There is an urgent need to adapt infrastructure, public health systems and intense heat response standards to the changing climate.