China logs 52.2 Celsius as extreme weather rewrites records
China logs 52.2 Celsius as extreme weather rewrites records
www.reuters.com
China logs 52.2 Celsius as extreme weather rewrites records
82 comments
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Gonna be a fun next century or so
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Not if all the capitalists get their shit together and see that short term profits aren't worth the mid term extinction of humanity.
Which should happen any moment.
Aaaaaaaany moment.
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Ok, so it doesn’t mention wet bulb temperature anywhere, so I went to figure it out. The first thing I was surprised with is apparently most of online calculators don’t take in values higher than 50C.
I couldn’t find the exact data about humidity for that day, but it has been 35-40%+ at a minimum for most days in that region, sometimes even reaching 90%.
So, 52C at around 40% humidity is 37.5C in wet bulb temp. The point of survivability is around 35, and most humans should be able to withstand 37.5 for several hours, but it’s much worse for sick or elderly. 39 is often a death sentence even for healthy humans after just two hours — your body can no longer lose heat and you bake from the inside. That’s like having an unstoppable runaway fever. And with that humidity it’s reached at 54C.
We’re dangerously close to that.
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Just out of interest, what would be the wet bulb temperature at 90% humidity? I'm not familiar with that temperature scale.
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Wet bulb temperature is basically converting to 100% humidity equivalent, so as you get closer to 100%, WBT approaches measured temperature. We use this metric because our bodies cool mostly via evaporation, and no evaporation is possible at 100% — the air is already fully saturated. So in general, WBT means minimum possible temperature that can be reached by evaporative cooling. Once your body loses the ability to cool, it rushes to match surrounding wet bulb temperature (or even exceed it, since we produce about 100W of heat energy by simply existing).
So 52C at 90% is about 50C WBT. Survivable for mere minutes for some, and probably for about an hour or so for most humans. Definitely not survivable for a full day.
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To put this into perspective, a humid 60°C are conditions where hyperthermia (getting too hot) can take effect within 10 minutes of exposure.
We're 8°C from that point. We are within arms reach of creating conditions so hostile to human life that survivability for most people will be unimaginably low.
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Hottest day ever.
Until next year.
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With how cyclical heat seems to be, probably the hottest year until 4 years from now.
Just long enough for sceptics to dismiss it again, because any day without high heat means climate change is fake.
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According to this informative video about the "super El Niño" we're heading into, next year is going to be worse. Less easily dismissed, not that it'll help. If we get any kind of extreme weather this winter before next year's even hotter summer, that'll be fodder for them, too. As we all know, anytime it snows, that proves climate change is a myth. 🙄
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Just imagine how summer temps will be in 10 years from today.
Hoooooo boy... it's gonna be HOT eh
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By the end of the century, there's going to be a lot of places abandoned to heat and sea level rise.
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Incidentally, China is the single largest contributor of GHGs in the world. Their coal fired power generation is immense and incredibly damaging.
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Because China is a country with the third largest land mass with the second largest population in the world. But per capita, they produce half of what an American does.
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You have to measure per capita. A population 4 times the size of the US, you can't compare straight numbers.
Their one child policy is probably the best thing that ever happened to reduce greenhouse gas emissions too.
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This is actually not true. The US has contributed almost double the total emissions of China.
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OP said China is there largest contributor. That is true.
OP did not say China made the largest contribution historically.
This isn't about historical. What's done is done and we need to act on what can be changed now. We can't change history. Your link is useless.
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That really is hot :(
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People and native animals start dying en-masse around the 50Deg mark, it’s horrific this is becoming normal.
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and here I thought 33 C is already hot enough
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Maybe a stupid question, but is this measured in the sun or shade?
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Temperature reports like this always use in-the-shade measurements. You can get much higher temps when measuring in direct sunlight, like easily 100C+, depending on the material of your measuring device.
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We should start calling climate news hot news!
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