As the world continues to get hotter and hotter, there will be places where human life is not sustainable.
One of the measures for what those temperatures will be is called “
the wet-bulb temperature.”
The body’s natural cooling system is perspiration. When you get hot, you sweat. Then a wind or breeze blows across your skin, evaporating the sweat and cooling your body.
It works extremely well, but not when there is high humidity. The humidity keeps the sweat from evaporating, which then lessens the ability of your sweat to cool your body.
All of this is explained in a short video linked above. The bottom line is that humidity is going up as temperatures warm and humans will have fewer places where they can live — it will just be too hot.
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.
