A hell in the making and a study that reduces the chances of survival of healthy human beings

It seems that it was not just the cowardly butcher Bloodymir Putin who surprised the world with their savage invasion of Ukraine, Planet Earth also decided to do the same, presenting not only abnormally high temperatures at the Poles (in some cases 30 ºC and 40 ºC higher than usual) but much worse than that, the heating takes place in both Poles at the same time. Something that doesn’t usually happen because at the moment the South Pole and the North Pole are in different seasons. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/03/24/parts-of-antarctica-have-been-40degc-warmer-than-their-march-average

And if last year, in August, Europe broke its record for maximum temperature, with 48.8 ºC, in Italy, it can’t be very surprising if this year there is a new European record. Now add to this scenario the worrying conclusions of the article published this year in the Journal of Applied Physiology. The human body can survive a high temperature above 45 ºC ate low humidity conditions, due to the natural cooling mechanism, associated with the evaporation of sweat, And has been widely believed that a 35°C wet-bulb temperature (at 100 percent humidity) was the maximum a human could endure before they could no longer adequately regulate their body temperature, potentially causing heatstroke or death. However, the new evidence shows that the actual maximum wet-bulb temperature is lower – about 31°C.  Bear also in mind that the conditions of the aforementioned study concern healthy young people, which means, an elderly person or an unhealthy young person will have an even lower wet-bulb temperature. https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/japplphysiol.00738.2021

PS – And in the meantime, an ice shelf with almost 500 square miles, previously thought to be stable has just collapsed in Antarctica which is not a good sign for things to come. Most likely the prediction of Oxford Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert that “Heat stress could make half the planet uninhabitable for mammals outdoors“ will eventually turn into reality.